✅Could Western intelligence agencies have had a hand in the Chernobyl tragedy? I examine the issue based on facts

[Russian Bear]

On April 26, 1986, an accident occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.


The Soviet people found out about this three days later.

☢️ The Chernobyl accident is considered the largest in the history of nuclear energy.

Consequences of the accident:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MvZG4Z7gGdw

Construction of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (1972-1984):

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=nsCv_d67LZ4

Chernobyl Operation Area (1987):

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=IOPNW_EylDE

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=gPm9nyqbgyQ

☢️ A huge amount of radioactive substances entered the atmosphere: about 400 times more than during the explosions in Hiroshima.

☢️ There is still debate about what exactly caused the disaster.

There is even a version that the station was destroyed deliberately. Allegedly, it was sabotage by enemies of the USSR.

☢️ Immediately after the accident, 31 people died. Many of them - in terrible agony, due to severe radiation.

☢️ The total number of victims is also still debated. This is because it is impossible to calculate how many people died from diseases that arose specifically because of radiation.

☢️ According to the UN, the real figure is 3,940 people.

☢️ Other organizations claim that the number of victims is hundreds of times higher.

☢️ 8.4 million residents of the USSR were exposed to radiation.

☢️ The contamination covered 200 thousand km².

☢️ Of these, 70% are on the lands of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

☢️ It reached Sweden, Finland and even the Arctic.
Having flown across the ocean, the dirty cloud poured out its contents in Florida, on the heads of Americans. They say that farmers killed all the cows that ate grass in those days.

☢️ An area of 30 km around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was declared an exclusion zone. That is, a place where it is forbidden to live, be without permission and use natural resources.

☢️ The economic damage has exceeded 500 billion dollars in 25 years since the accident.



Chernobyl is the pain of a huge country. But there is one question: could the West have had a hand in the Chernobyl tragedy?

PRIDE AND PAIN OF THE SOVIET UNION
The idea of using the “peaceful atom” to serve the national economy was first expressed by Academician Kurchatov, the creator of the Soviet atomic bomb. Nuclear energy was seen as a cleaner replacement for coal and oil.

✅ The world's first nuclear power plant, by the way, was also Soviet.



✅ It was launched in Obninsk in 1954.
✅ By the 70s, nuclear power plants were actively built, and within ten years they were generating 15% of the country's electricity.
✅ Chernobyl was the pride of the Soviet Union: by 1986, it was the most powerful.
✅ No one doubted that the future of energy was in nuclear power plants.

Its construction began in 1970, 18 km from the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl, hence the name.

Important fact!!!
Chernobyl - from Ukrainian it is wormwood (bitter herb)
The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, burning like a torch, fell from heaven and fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. And a third of the waters became wormwood, and many people died from the waters, because they became bitter (Rev. 8:10-11)

Elder Paisios the Athonite (†1994) (Orthodox elder), one of the greatest pillars of Athonite monasticism in the 20th century, said that the Apocalypse is already being fulfilled today, but unfortunately, not everyone sees it. He pointed out that the Apostle John the Theologian gave us a detailed and clear description of the coming events. “Perhaps,” said Elder Paisios, “we will have to experience much of what is said in the Apocalypse. Apostasy has come, and now all that remains is for the “son of perdition” to come (2 Thessalonians 2:3). Today, reading the Apocalypse is like reading a newspaper, everything is written so clearly.” As an example, he cited the prophecy about the fall of the star “wormwood”, which poisoned a third of the waters, which led to the death of many people (Rev. 8:10-11). This prophecy, the God-wise elder claimed, had already come true in the form of the Chernobyl tragedy of 1986 (wormwood in Ukrainian is chernobylnik), and therefore "those who expect a star to fall are deeply mistaken, and will not understand that this has already come true." Wormwood in Ukrainian is "chernobylnik" it would seem, what does a star have to do with it. The closest star to us; the Sun. The main processes in stars; nuclear reactions. Nuclear missiles are the stars that "will fall from heaven" Matthew 24:29. The Lord showed the Apostle John the events of the last times. How could a Galilean fisherman describe the action of nuclear weapons, missiles falling from the sky and a nuclear explosion. Exactly as falling stars, and even from a scientific point of view he is right, because the same processes occur in nuclear weapons as on the stars. "And many people died from the waters because they became bitter" - contaminated with radiation. The continuation of this prophecy can be seen in the tragedy at Fukushima, where not one, but several reactors are throwing tons of water contaminated with radiation into the world's oceans.
https://stihi.ru/2017/04/27/10751

At the same time, three kilometers away, the city of Pripyat was founded - especially for the station employees and their families.

Pripyat was a model Soviet city. By 1986, its population was almost 50 thousand people, the average age of the city's residents was 26 years. There was everything for a comfortable life: kindergartens, schools, shops, a cinema and a swimming pool. It was prestigious to work and live here, and salaries were quite high for those times. Now it is a city that does not exist. The main emission of radioactive dust occurred in the direction of Pripyat.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MN4XQHEC9h0

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=HhbkLwUUhKo

☢️ On the night of April 26, 1986, an explosion occurred at the 4th power unit of the station.

☢️ The reactor was completely destroyed, a mixture of hot metal, concrete and fuel spread throughout the premises.

☢️ A fire broke out that lasted for 10 days.

☢️ A mixture of radioactive substances was thrown into the sky.

☢️ Radioactive iodine, which causes thyroid cancer, posed a serious danger. Fortunately, it has a short half-life of 8 days, and it disappeared in the first two weeks.

☢️ Now, strontium and cesium remain as an echo of the accident. Their half-life is 30 years. This means that every 30 years their activity decreases by half.

☢️ Pripyat was evacuated on April 27.


Evacuation of Pripyat residents by buses

☢️ In May, 116 thousand people were resettled from 188 settlements within 30 km around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

☢️ True, no one talked about radiation then. Everyone thought that they would soon return home.

☢️ Over 500 thousand liquidators extinguished the fire and cleared the territory.

☢️ They worked where the “shine” was 700 microroentgens, when it is safe - no more than 50. An hour in such a place is death.

☢️ The reactor shaft was covered from helicopters with a mixture of boron, lead and dolomite to reduce radiation. By the end of June, about 11 thousand tons of materials had been dropped.



☢️ Few people know, but the tragedy gave a powerful impetus to the development of domestic robotics.
At first, two robots were brought from Germany to help people. But due to the high level of radiation, their electronics immediately failed.

☢️ As a result, our cyberneticists developed 15 liquidator robots. They not only cleaned up the pollution, but also conducted reconnaissance. They were sent to where a person was doomed.
According to experts, the machines replaced several thousand people and saved the lives of hundreds.

☢️ By autumn, the liquidators reached the corridors under the reactor, where the hot lava flowed. It cooled and solidified into a black mass weighing 11 tons. It was called the "elephant's foot".


"Elephant's foot" immediately after the accident

☢️ According to measurements, a lethal dose of radiation could easily be received in 300 seconds near it. “Noga” still emits radiation and may still remain the most dangerous waste in the world.

☢️ Another tragedy occurred in October. The Mi-8 helicopter, which was processing the roof of the station, touched the crane cable with its blades and fell to the ground. Four people died.

Helicopter crash during cleanup operations at nuclear reactor:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=YrBahONMWac

☢️ The dedication of the liquidators yielded results. By November 30, the “Shelter” facility was built - a concrete sarcophagus more than 50 m high, which covered the destroyed reactor.
And all this in the shortest possible time - in 206 days!

☢️ Thanks to the installation, radiation emissions into the atmosphere stopped.

☢️ It is estimated that 95% of the nuclear fuel, which is approximately 180 tons of uranium, is inside the Shelter.

☢️ The Soviet authorities did not talk about the tragedy until it was reported in the West. It was Sweden that was the first in Europe to receive a radioactive cloud, and they began to look for its source. Only three days later, on April 28, did the USSR confirm the fact of the accident to its Western neighbors. That same evening, the Vremya program aired a short report about Chernobyl for the first time.

The newspapers wrote about the heroism of the liquidators, and not a word about the scale of the disaster and the level of radiation. And in general, everything seemed to be fine: we were saving people, eliminating the consequences.

As Gorbachev later said, the country's leadership did not have a "full picture of what happened" and was afraid of panic. He himself made an address only on May 14.

But overseas, they were having a blast. Already on April 29, the headlines of Western media were screaming about a nuclear nightmare in the Union, about widespread radiation, about thousands of dead in lead coffins.



Of course, all this had little to do with the truth. But Gorbachev, who allegedly advocated glasnost, himself kept silent about information that was inconvenient for him.

WHO IS TO BLAME?
To understand how the accident happened, I will tell you a little about the operating principle of the nuclear power plant.

The heart of this nuclear power plant is the RBMK-1000 reactor. A nuclear chain reaction occurs in it, due to which a large amount of heat is released. To control the reaction, rods are used. When they are lowered, the process of fission of atoms slows down, and the power drops. When the rods are raised, the power increases.

The personnel monitors stability. In turn, the reactor heats the water, and steam is fed to the turbogenerator. The blades spin and generate energy. If the reactor stops, the turbine rotates by inertia.

On the night of April 26, they wanted to know: would there be enough inertia to generate electricity for 40 seconds before turning on the diesel generators.

Energy is needed for the pumps that continuously pump water to cool the reactor.

☢️ The so-called "rundown experiment" was attempted three times, but without success.
☢️ During the fourth, the reactor exploded.

For the experiment, it was necessary to reduce the power to 700 megawatts. This is 22% of the total charge.

The emergency cooling system and automatic protection were turned off so that they would not work. When switching to manual mode, the power suddenly dropped to 30 megawatts.

The reactor was unstable and had to be shut down.

The process was managed by Anatoly Dyatlov, deputy chief engineer.

According to recollections, employees told Dyatlov that it was impossible to continue testing under such conditions. But he threatened to fire them if they did not obey.

To prevent the reactor from stalling, the operator raised most of the rods. The power reached 200 megawatts. The experiment began with low readings.

The steam supply to the turbines was turned off. The pumps worked due to inertia.

What happened next is not exactly known. It seems that the reactor began to gain power. The temperature and pressure grew, and the evaporation became uncontrollable.

36 seconds after the start of the test, the operator pressed the emergency protection button AZ-5 to shut down the reactor. All 179 rods descended and, by all rights, should have stopped the process.

But instead, the power jumped 100 times. And then - two strong explosions. The two-ton lid of the reactor swung open, the red-hot contents burst out. The 4th power unit was destroyed.

Immediately after the accident, a commission was assembled, which came to the conclusion that the personnel were to blame for the disaster.


View of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant 3 days after the explosion

They violated 12 points of the reactor operating instructions, switched off the protection system five times. They conducted an experiment at any cost, which led to a catastrophe.

Six people were deprived of their freedom by a court decision, including that same Dyatlov.

Later, the opinion was revised: the main reason was named as the design features of the reactor, which the personnel did not know about.

One of them is the end effect of the rods, which under certain conditions works not as a brake, but as a gas and leads to a sharp increase in power.

It sounds smooth, but this version seems to want to say that the Soviet reactor is the main problem. What difference does it make what the personnel did?

It is interesting that two years before the accident, the chief designer sent a letter to the stations with RBMK reactors, where he warned about the shortcomings of the rods.

But the management of the NPP, it seems, did not react in any way.

SABOTAGE

As one expert said: “The reactor itself was reliable, it just needed to be used for work, not experiments.”

Many experts claim that it was the actions of the personnel that provided the means for the reactor explosion.

In general, the KGB supervised security at the station. It monitored construction, and then the work. The special services identified 29 accidents over 10 years, eight of them due to the fault of the personnel. They pointed to the carelessness of engineers and the negligence of builders.

The party leadership did not react to the reports.

It is interesting that few people knew about the deadly experiment. It was not agreed upon with either the scientific director Anatoly Aleksandrov or the reactor designer Nikolai Dollezhal.
They were later blamed for the “bad reactor”.

For some reason, the development of the program was entrusted to the organization “Dontekhenergo”, which was not involved in nuclear energy. Plus, the Chernobyl station is the only one where neither the director Bryukhanov, nor the chief engineer Fomin, nor his deputy Dyatlov were nuclear specialists.

That is, the experiment was carried out where the management did not ask questions.

As they say, if you want to ruin something, put amateurs in it.

Yuri Andreyev, the shift supervisor, is sure that the cause of the accident is in the testing program. He came to the conclusion that if you carry it out from the first to the last point, the reactor will certainly explode.

In 1975, there was an accident at the Leningrad station with a similar scenario. But there, the protection systems worked perfectly, which did not work or were turned off at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The reactor was shut down.

So here they needed a pretext to take the reactor out of a safe state and turn everything off.

And they found a pretext - an absurd experiment.

Another fact in favor of sabotage ➡️

The Duga radar station was located 10 km from Chernobyl. It was part of the early warning system for missile attacks and "scanned" the US territory.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=tI8-146eTZE

It cost 200 million Soviet rubles to build.

After its construction, the Americans were very scared. They began to trumpet that the station was jamming all communications services and radio signals. They insultingly called the Duga a Russian woodpecker. Due to the characteristic sound it made.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=aOMVdOc9UbE

The whole world and all countries heard this sound, and their radio stations received this signal. They tried to drown it out, but nothing worked: it was too strong, it was simply impossible to drown it out. I will tell you more about this later.

It is clear that with the successful operation of the system, the USSR became more invulnerable, which could not please the Americans.

After the accident, "Duga" was in the radiation zone and the project was shut down.

If we take the sabotage seriously, then it was a double hit: both the defense of the USSR and the economy were hit.

Without regard for civilian casualties or environmental damage to Europe.

Ukrainian nuclear physicist Nikolai Kravchuk conducted his own investigation. He came to the conclusion that everything was deliberately arranged to destroy the Soviet Union and separate Ukraine from Russia.

He published the results of his research in Moscow in 2011. But even before the publication, after the first leaks of information, the scientist was fired from the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

In his opinion, the explosion was planned and led by members of the Central Committee of the CPSU, and the personnel were made “scapegoats”.

Considering that almost the entire top of the CPSU were traitors, anything is possible.

Plus, the scientist proved that by the time of the accident the state of the reactor had changed. Which could not have happened by accident. For example, it contained the maximum amount of radioactive materials. Some cells contained highly enriched fuel from nuclear submarines, which led to a sharp increase in power and temperature.
And the experiment was conducted on a turbogenerator with a broken bearing.

You can write this version off as a fascination with conspiracy theories. But in 2012, at a meeting in the State Duma, even the first deputy chairman for ecology Ivan Nikitchuk said: “As a person who worked in the nuclear industry for almost 30 years, I am inclined to consider the accident that happened at Chernobyl to be sabotage.”

Of course, no one caught the saboteurs red-handed. In fact, no one was going to catch them. But it is clear who benefited from the accident.

Chernobyl became an important link in the chain of failures that accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In 2016, the sarcophagus was covered with a new safe arch. The total cost of the project is 2.15 billion euros. Ukraine collected money for the construction from all over the world: it was financed by 44 countries.

According to experts, in 50 years, people will already be living 30 km from the station, but the 10 km zone will forever remain uninhabitable.
By the way, nature in Chernobyl is recovering very quickly.

And another interesting fact: it turns out that the Chernobyl nuclear power plant stopped operating only in 2000, and before that it worked safely and generated energy! After all, in addition to the 4th power unit, there were others that were not damaged.



Nuclear power plants like Chernobyl were the most powerful in the USSR and some of the most powerful nuclear power plants in the world.

The design capacity of the plant after full construction was to be 6,000 MW; by April 1986, four power units with a total electrical capacity of 4,000 MW were in operation.

Among the plants with RBMK reactors (high-power channel reactor), the most powerful were the power units with RBMK-1000 and RBMK-1500 reactors. These reactors were developed in the Soviet Union and used in nuclear power plants (NPPs).

These stations were built throughout the union, but after the accident many projects were stopped, including in socialist countries. This was a blow to the economy, huge amounts of money were spent on the construction of nuclear power plants and at 80 and 99% of completion they were stopped.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=fvTO9CyN34g

[Russian Bear]

The Most Dangerous Object on Earth: What is the "Elephant's Foot" in Chernobyl






It is believed that Chernobyl, which has long since become an exclusion zone, is no longer dangerous. The level of radioactive threat from the site has indeed decreased over the years, but there is still a place there that is still mortally dangerous to approach.

Source of the threat
On December 8, 1989, the newspaper Pravda published an article: “What are people doing in the “Sarcophagus”?”, which was supplemented with photographs. It was here that readers first saw a photo of a giant radioactive stalactite formed by solidified lava that resembled an elephant’s foot. Subsequently, photographs of the “elephant’s foot”, black and white and color, taken with different magnifications and different lighting, flew around the world.

The discovery of this strange object dates back to the late autumn of 1986. After several months of work, the team of liquidators of the Chernobyl disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant finally managed to penetrate the underground corridor of the damaged fourth reactor. Inside the so-called bubbler pool, where a narrow passage led, they found solidified lava that had flowed out of the active zone.

The radioactive deposit, later called the "elephant's foot", was gray in color with metallic highlights and glassy inclusions on the sides. Experts immediately assumed that this mass contained lead, which was dropped from helicopters to cool the reactor zone by consuming heat when this metal melted. The preliminary estimate of the object's weight is 11 tons.

The radiation sensors literally screamed that it was forbidden to approach the discovered place! As one of the eyewitnesses, research engineer Georgy Popkov, recalled, the searchers found a children's horse on wheels somewhere, tied a measuring sensor to it and pushed it towards the "elephant's foot". Having returned the wheeled vehicle, they gasped - the device showed 14.5 thousand roentgens per hour: the radiation level exceeded the lethal dose for a person by 20 times!

The radiation level was measured, but how to take samples from the most dangerous object? Specialists built a system from a self-propelled cart and an electric drill installed on top. The structure drove up to the stalactite, but they were unable to drill a hole in it - the material turned out to be too hard. One attempt after another failed.

In the end, one of the soldiers, risking his own life, quickly ran up to the object and began to hit the hardened mass with an axe. He still managed to break off a small piece of material, which was enough for analysis. The desperate officer was immediately evacuated to the hospital by helicopter. Nothing is known about his further fate.

The results of the study of the radioactive substance showed that there was no trace of lead in it, but silicon dioxide, uranium, zirconium, titanium, magnesium, graphite and silicate glass were in abundance. That is, practically the entire set of radionuclides of the nuclear fuel born in the hellish kitchen of the Chernobyl accident. The glassy mass was simply nicknamed "LAVA". This super-dense substance, practically impossible to drill, could only be damaged by shots from a Kalashnikov assault rifle and armor-piercing shells.

Still dangerous
By the mid-1990s, the outer layers of the "elephant's foot" began to turn into dust, and the mass began to crack. The intensity of its radiation noticeably decreased, and specialists began to approach it more often, of course in protective suits. In 1996, the site was even visited by the deputy director of the New Confinement project, Artur Korneev - we are talking about the enterprise that operates the sarcophagus over the 4th reactor.

Subsequently, specialists established that the mass of the future "elephant's foot", before taking its current position, traveled more than two meters through pipes and cracks. There were concerns that radioactive substances could penetrate deeper into the ground and come into contact with groundwater, threatening the lives of people who use this water. However, as of 2016, no movement of the mass into the depths has been recorded. The only thing is the ongoing nuclear decay, which makes the "elephant's foot" several degrees warmer than the environment.

However, even such radiation is still dangerous for a person who is near the object. Radiation can overcome any protective mechanisms of our body and change the bonds that hold DNA together, which means it can lead to various kinds of damage at the cellular level. In particular, it can lead to uncontrolled cell proliferation, which causes a cancerous tumor.

According to experts, after 30 seconds of being near the "elephant's foot", a person will feel dizzy and tired, after two minutes he will start bleeding and have a fever, after 4 minutes vomiting and diarrhea will be added to them, after another minute the level of infection of the body will reach a critical point, after which irreversible processes will start - death will occur in two days. The "elephant's foot" is most likely still the most dangerous waste on the planet.

According to experts, this place will remain radioactive for an incredibly long time - for 100 thousand years, although the radiation level will gradually decrease every year. But for now it is still dangerous there. In 2019, a new insulating structure was urgently built over the 4th power unit to completely protect the external environment from the ongoing emissions of a huge amount of isotopes. The new sarcophagus is designed for 100 years of operation.

[Russian Bear]

On the topic of the exclusion zone and stalkers, I advise you to watch this film and read the book

The book and the film are completely different plots; the only thing that unites them is the zone.

Based on the novel "Roadside Picnic" by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. The Zone that arose on Earth for unknown reasons attracts attention with inexplicable phenomena that occur there. A rumor has spread that in the center of the Zone there is something that gives a person everything he wants. But staying in the Zone is deadly, and therefore it is strictly guarded. There, each for their own reasons, the Writer and the Professor go, the Stalker leads them to the mysterious center, feeling and understanding the Zone...

IMDb rating: 8,1

Year of production: 1979

Directed by: Andrey Tarkovsky
Writted by: Strugatsky Boris, Strugatsky Arkady
Music: Artemyev Eduard
Operator: Knyazhinsky Alexander
Production Designer: Andrey Tarkovsky

Cast: Nikolay Grinko, Anatoly Solonitsyn, Alisa Freindlich, Alexander Kaidanovsky

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Q3hBLv-HLEc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadside_Picnic



Roadside Picnic is a philosophical science fiction novel by the Soviet authors Arkady and Boris Strugatsky that was written in 1971 and published in 1972. It is their most popular and most widely translated novel outside the former Soviet Union. As of 2003, Boris Strugatsky counted 55 publications of Roadside Picnic in 22 countries.

Book PDF: https://content.cosmos.art/media/pag...ide-picnic.pdf




Secret Chronicles: What secret does the Chernobyl Red Forest hide and why is it so rarely remembered?





The Red Forest is an area near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, named for the characteristic rusty shade that the trees acquired under the influence of radiation. To this day, the radiation background in this area is hundreds of times higher, and it is extremely dangerous to be there. Few people know that in 1987, they tried to destroy the Red Forest, but the work was carried out incorrectly, which led to monstrous consequences that are still not talked about.

How the forest turned red
As a result of the accident in Chernobyl, there was a colossal release of radioactive dust, most of which covered an area of about 202 km². The trees received a very high dose of radiation, which is why they turned a reddish-red color. In fact, several hectares of vegetation died under the influence of radiation.

After the disaster, an exclusion zone was formed around the nuclear power plant, which was divided into 4 parts. The first and most affected of them was the Red Forest: here, coniferous trees were completely destroyed, and deciduous trees, which are a minority, were partially damaged. The pine needles acquired a characteristic brick shade, all the above-ground parts of the trees, in fact, "burned" alive.

All living things capable of movement hastily left the dangerous territory, but plants cannot boast of such abilities, so they suffered the heaviest blow. While animals and birds, feeling the threat from the reactor, rushed away at full speed, the trees became a filter, delaying the spread of radioactive dust. And the death of flora from radiation was not the final point: the contaminated forests awaited total deforestation.

Decontamination
Objects that have been exposed to radiation are required to be cleaned of radioactive dust, but in the case of the forest, this did not solve the problem, because it is part of the ecosystem. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that the accident at the nuclear power plant occurred in the spring. During this period, trees absorb substances from the soil, the juices flow through all the veins, and the relationship with the environment increases. Scientists said that the forest was becoming almost more dangerous than the disaster itself.

As a result, it was decided to demolish the forest and then bury it. They drove in bulldozers, poured a 2.5 m high and 3.5 km long rampart, loaded radioactive plants into it and covered it with a meter-thick layer of soil.

This allowed the radiation level to be reduced, but the fatal error lay in the very nature of the work. The thing is that the trees were buried at a depth where groundwater lies, and soon radionuclides began to be found in the water near the dug trenches, and a couple of years later - in remote places. This eerie secret inspires real horror, if you think about the fact that water bodies surround us everywhere.

All this was superimposed on the fact that in the area of the Red Forest there were official burial sites for nuclear waste, many of which were affected by excavations. It is not surprising that the radioactive background reached some unimaginable indicators!

Secret chronicles: what secret does the Chernobyl Red Forest hide and why is it so rarely remembered?

Forest revival
Cutting down trees in order to reduce radiation also turned out to be not very successful. A new forest grew in place of the Red Forest, which also fed on contaminated groundwater, and some of the plants similarly acquired a reddish tint.

In 2020, the most dangerous part of the exclusion zone was once again struck by misfortune. A fire broke out, and brave firefighters, like in 1986, went to put it out, risking their health. Fire turns plants into ash, produces smoke, and they are easily carried away by the wind, so the degree of threat is difficult to overestimate. It was lucky that the fire did not start immediately after the burial - in that case, the damage caused could be multiplied by 2. The situation was resolved safely, but the Red Forest is still a time bomb. Who knows what consequences await humanity and what fate will befall this mysterious part of the Chernobyl exclusion zone? The territory will remain uninhabitable for many years, and if people have understood this well, then animals quickly began to return to their habitat. They have learned to survive there, and there are no terrible monsters there, but what is there is an increase in the number of genetic mutations. Radiation spares no one.



This area is located near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (1-2 kilometers to the west) and is divided into four sections/zones (depending on the degree of damage and radiation contamination).

Red Forest. First zone
Red Forest. Second zone
Red Forest. Third zone
Red Forest. Fourth zone

Red Forest. First zone
The most damaged zone. The radiation dose is up to 10,000 rad, as a result of which the conifers were completely destroyed and deciduous trees were partially damaged.
The above-ground parts of the pines died completely, their needles became brick-colored. The entire Chernobyl forest in this zone can be said to have “burned”, having absorbed significant volumes of radioactive emissions.
Due to severe contamination with radioactive substances, measures were taken to bury the dead trees.
Forest restoration activities were carried out in the "Red Forest" area, and the forest is already being restored on an area of 500 hectares of this area.
This area received the highest dose of external gamma radiation in the first years after the Chernobyl accident.
The area of the zone is quite large: 4.5 thousand hectares.

Red Forest. Second zone
In this zone (the absorption dose was up to 80 thousand rads), 25 to 40% of trees died, up to 95% were damaged, and the main part of the undergrowth (from 1 to 2.5 m in height) was affected, with buds and young shoots dying.
The area of the area itself is 12.5 thousand hectares, while pine forests occupied 3.8 thousand hectares.

Red Forest. Third zone
This area absorbed a dose of 500 rads. Zone of moderate damage to the pine forest.
Young shoots were mostly affected, while coniferous trees were affected by individual sections of branches.
The growth of pine trees was abnormal, but they retained their viability.
The area of the third zone of the red forest of Chernobyl is 43.3 thousand hectares, pine forests occupied an area of 11.9 thousand hectares.

Red forest. Fourth zone
The weakest zone of radiation damage - up to 120 rad, here only some abnormal processes in growth took place.
There was no visible damage to the pines. All trees retained normal growth and color of needles.

Consequences of damage to the red forest
Mutation of trees in the red forest
And although at present the dose of radioactive substances has become significantly lower, young planted pine shoots still receive their doses, which lead to mutation of the organs responsible for generation.
The source of radiation that the red forest of Chernobyl receives are radionuclides preserved in the biomass and substrate, which were buried back in 1986.
Getting through the root system, radioactive substances internally irradiate young growing shoots.
As a result, some of them are short (even though 20 years have passed), some branches do not have needles, while on others they are either long or short, this is called morphosis.
Whereas with a received dose of 400 rad (which is considered an average indicator), the trees halved the growth of the trunk diameter.
But not everything is so bad: positive trends were also noted, for example, the affected trees actively "switched on" the recovery processes.
For example, the spruce formed needles up to 4.5 cm, and the pine up to 14 cm (this is considered gigantic).
Three years after what happened in Chernobyl, the total amount of needle mass began to increase and by 1992 it had increased by 3.5 times.

Pine mutation in a rusty forest
Similar changes affected seed germination. This indicates that reproductive functions have increased.
Heavily affected and dead areas are occupied by deciduous trees, mainly birch or shrubs.
Turf is also gradually "conquering" the soil.
If we talk about the possibility of human influence on soil renewal, then this is possible.
To carry out such procedures, it is necessary to remove a layer of soil, and then replace it with healthy soil.
This is an expensive matter, no one wants to allocate funding for this project, in addition, the issue of storing the removed layer has not been resolved, because moving it to a new place means contaminating another territory.
If we leave this issue to natural processes, it will take tens of thousands of years for the contaminated soil layer to go deep into the earth and for plant roots to not be exposed to radioactive poisoning.

[Russian Bear]

The Truth About the Heroism of Three Chernobyl Divers Who Saved Millions⁠⁠

The events of 34 years ago could have turned into a much greater tragedy if the Chernobyl accident had not been limited to one explosion. Otherwise, the second radioactive cloud would have reached Europe and the western regions of Russia. Volunteer divers prevented a catastrophe, thereby saving the lives of thousands of people. The story of the heroes has become overgrown with rumors. We suggest finding out the truth about the incident that occurred at the blazing nuclear power plant in early May 1986.



Volunteer divers: Alexey Ananenko, Valery Bespalov and Boris Baranov

The emergency situation required an operation involving three people with scuba diving skills. The task force honestly warned about the high risk of receiving a lethal dose of radiation. Volunteers were found quickly. Three people consciously took the risk. They understood the full horror of the consequences of the second explosion, the inevitability of which was not in doubt.

Unlike the ordinary people, frightened by vague rumors, the divers adequately assessed the situation. For the first ten days, the liquidators at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant fought the fire, pouring water on the fire, covering the fire with sand and rubble. The emergency evacuation of people was carried out quickly, albeit with errors. All these actions together helped prevent terrible consequences.

According to the Russian medical dosimetric registry, which was presented in Vienna in 2006, the main consequence of the disaster was a negative change in thyroid cancer statistics. Many patients were children in 1986. Doctors explain the nature of the consequences by the presence of radioactive iodine in food.



Another 50 people died directly as a result of the fire at the nuclear power plant. All the victims were employees of the power plant, firefighters, and rescuers. The long-term effects of radiation exposure took the lives of four thousand people. The number of victims would have been immeasurably higher if a second explosion had occurred at the power plant. The situation at the nuclear power plant worsened five days later. The fire was practically under control. But another threat loomed over the people. The reactor, destroying the concrete slab, continued to melt. Under the concrete there was a pool with a huge volume of water. If the radioactive fuel reached the water, a new explosion of incredible power would thunder. The contact of the red-hot mass of the nuclear reactor with water would throw a huge cloud of radioactive water and steam into the atmosphere. According to preliminary calculations, the cloud would inevitably cover the western regions of Russia and Europe.



To prevent a nuclear disaster, it was necessary to immediately drain the water pool. Unfortunately, the valves could not be controlled from the outside due to the destruction of the nuclear power plant. Direct access to the shut-off valves was underwater. Divers had to swim in close proximity to the nuclear reactor to reach the shut-off valves, manually open the valves and drain the pool. Three volunteers had to be found who would risk fatal radiation.

Three people were needed to participate in the dangerous mission. One diver had to carry a lamp, two had to turn the valve. Engineer Valery Bespalov and his colleague Alexey Ananenko declared their readiness to return to the destroyed power unit. Boris Baranov, who worked at the nuclear power plant as a shift supervisor, also volunteered. The volunteers realized that they would be exposed to extreme radiation in the pool.

It was pitch dark in the reservoir. The group navigated underwater with the help of a special flashlight. They took a roundabout route, trying not to get close to the radioactive contamination zone. The divers safely reached the valves. It took them several attempts to open the valves. The underwater expedition coped with the task, the water gushed out of the tank with a roar.

It took a whole day for the pool to be freed from millions of gallons of water. Three volunteers prevented a terrible catastrophe. They safely rose to the surface. After which they were taken to the hospital for examination. No one could believe that three daredevils managed to survive in the most dangerous conditions. Their feat became a legend, which quickly became overgrown with rumors.

According to rumors, the divers managed to survive only one week. Allegedly, they received a dose of radiation incompatible with life. Dosimeters near the bodies went off the scale. Therefore, the fallen heroes were buried in hermetically sealed lead coffins. Although everything was not so tragic. Probably, living heroes were not so dear to public opinion. So journalists rewrote the history of one feat.

But the Chernobyl divers were not going to die in a week, or in a year, or in decades. Thus, a heart attack cut short the life of shift supervisor Boris Baranov in 2005. Engineer Valeriy Bespalov worked safely at the Chernobyl NPP until his retirement, resigning in 2008. Alexey Ananenkov is still alive. He is the head of the "Ukrainian Nuclear Forum".

The legendary divers did not receive a lethal dose of radiation. Before the accident, they worked at the NPP and had sufficient qualifications to understand the degree of risk. Each participant in the mission had two dosimeters with them. The volunteers followed a route far from the deadly danger zone.

In 1986, the media presented rumors as reality, which helped to stir up public opinion. Even today, many sources support the version of the death of the legendary divers. The spread of rumors has reached the point that only close friends know about the true fate of the three volunteers. Yes, the Chernobyl accident is a tragedy that changed the lives of many people. Some took risks, eliminating the consequences of the disaster. Others lost their past due to resettlement. The overwhelming majority of the population of a huge country was at a loss due to the lack of reliable information. After 30 years, it is time to clarify, destroy the terrible myths and tell the true stories about the selfless professionalism of the liquidators.

https://pikabu.ru/story/pravda_o_pod...lionyi_8750221
https://vk.com/wall-133213761_12053

Liquidators: how the consequences of the Chernobyl accident were cleared up

April 26, 1986, at 01:23, an explosion occurred at the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Two employees of the station immediately died, the building of the fourth power unit was almost completely destroyed, the reactor "lid" - a concrete slab weighing about a thousand tons was torn off the pedestal, about 190 tons of radioactive substances - fuel and waste were released into the atmosphere. Isotopes of uranium, plutonium, iodine and cesium, with a half-life from several days to thousands of years.

Hundreds of thousands of people participated in the liquidation of the consequences of the disaster, they received unforgettable impressions, an indelible "nuclear tan" and very unreliable assistance from the state.

Liquidation of the consequences of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=xvYI8dz4Xk4

People
Liquidators – that’s what they called those who tried to minimize the consequences of the Chernobyl accident. About 600,000 people from all over the USSR can call themselves liquidators. The very first to eliminate the consequences of the explosion were the station employees, firefighters and police officers. All of them were doomed. Two died immediately in the explosion, several dozen more people died in the weeks after the accident.

Thousands of people came to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant from all corners of the country: chemical and physicist specialists, military personnel from the radiation, chemical and biological defense (RCBZ) troops, conscripts, builders, bulldozer operators, drivers, crane operators, welders… thousands and thousands of people.

Country roads are clogged with trucks, chemical reconnaissance vehicles, armored personnel carriers, bulldozers and dump trucks scurrying back and forth. Thousands of tons of construction materials, entire trains with replacement teams, big shots from Moscow ministries - all this was rushing to the epicenter of the disaster. The government took on the problem, quickly, on a large scale, sparing no money or effort.

But, despite the abundance of the latest technology, the main driving force of the process were people: specialists and ordinary workers who, with their own hands, corrected the consequences of this monstrous catastrophe, preventing it from growing to a global scale. It was they who received their terrible doses of radiation, chronic diseases, problems for the rest of their lives. The bulk of the work was carried out in 1986-1987, with approximately 240 thousand people taking part. In total, almost 7 million residents of the former Soviet Union can consider themselves "Chernobyl victims".

Control
The maximum dose of radiation that a liquidator was allowed to receive was 25 roentgens, which was about half the permissible dose for military personnel when operating in contaminated areas (50 roentgens). The threshold for acute radiation sickness, which can be fatal, begins somewhere at 100 roentgens (1 gray). Every day, dosimetrists wrote down the doses they received in their personal cards, and when the total exceeded the norm, the liquidator's work in the Zone was considered complete and he went home. But the shift did not always arrive on time, the data in the cards was often understated, and the background near the station was so unstable that even people in the same group at a distance of 50 meters from each other could receive completely different doses, and it was impossible to effectively monitor this even with individual dosimeters.

Conscripts who cleaned the roof of the third power unit in the first days after the fire was extinguished could receive the maximum dose in half an hour of work, if they only took a piece of a graphite absorber rod thrown here by the explosion from the fourth power unit for a couple of seconds.

While workers who were in the immediate vicinity of the exploded reactor, but protected by the southern intact wall, received doses thousands of times smaller.

Radiation levels (and, accordingly, doses) within the 30-kilometer zone around the exploded 4th reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986 differed from each other by millions of times: from several tenths of a milliroentgen per hour at the southern border of the zone to hundreds of roentgens per hour in some places at the nuclear power plant itself.

It was more difficult with equipment. Machinery is not people, it is iron, it accumulates radiation in the dust lying in all the seams and under the wheel arches, in the metal, in the rubber - everywhere. At all exits from the Zone, dosimetric posts were set up that measured all the equipment leaving. If the background exceeded the permissible indicators, the car was sent to the PUSO - (Special Treatment Point), where special watering machines and guys, wrapped from head to toe in rubber, washed them from fire hoses with a powerful stream of water with deactivating powder.

After each wash, new measurements were taken, if after three times the car continued to "ring" - it was sent to the burial ground, and the passengers got to the place of deployment on foot.

PUSO were scattered around the Zone for a reason. The main cascade consisted of four points: "Kopachi", "Lelyov", "Rudnya Veresnya", "Dityatki". Each subsequent PUSO allowed through - further from the nuclear power plant and closer to the normal world - only vehicles with lower and lower levels of radiation on them. The equipment sometimes served much less than people, hundreds of trucks, tractors, bulldozers, armored personnel carriers and helicopters found their eternal refuge on the "burial ground".



Work
The liquidation activities included two main components: the construction of a sarcophagus over the destroyed power unit to prevent further spread of radioactive substances and the deactivation of the already contaminated territory. In addition, radiation reconnaissance was carried out on a large scale, which was carried out by both military personnel of the radiation, chemical and biological protection troops and civilian specialists. They carefully checked the background levels and the level of contamination of soil and water throughout the exclusion zone and beyond, and it was on the basis of their data that decisions were made on carrying out certain work and resettling residents.

The most dangerous work was in the immediate vicinity of the destroyed reactor, where the main "reserves" of radioactive fuel ejected by the explosion were concentrated.

The top layer of soil was removed using bulldozers with "armored" truncated cabins for drivers only. The cabins are covered with sheet armor, with small leaded windows, several huge rear-view mirrors are installed on the radiator, door and front bumper. Later, they began to use radio-controlled vehicles of Soviet and Japanese manufacture.

Then similarly equipped excavators filled the soil into metal containers, workers closed the lids and cranes loaded them onto large trucks to then bury them in specially designated places. All work was carried out strictly according to time, sometimes one work "shift" did not exceed five minutes.

"There are eleven of us. So, the total work time is about an hour. Let's work. The IMR driver came running, flew like a bullet through the top hatch into the car, slammed the lid. The engine rumbled. I sent the first fighter, making a note of the time. He deftly placed the container, threw back the lid, signaled to the driver with his hand - it was time to load. Preparing the container took only forty seconds. The fighter returned, breathing heavily with excitement. It's amazing how much sweat a person produces under the influence of fear."

Sergey Belyakov, "Liquidator"

In addition to removing the soil, trees were cut and buried, roads and vehicle parking areas were washed to minimize the amount of radioactive dust carried by transport.

But the main work was, of course, the construction of the Shelter. It was built in a record short time: 206 days, by almost 90 thousand people. The cyclopean "sarcophagus" includes seven thousand tons of metal structures and almost 800 thousand tons of concrete. Welders, cutters, crane operators, construction workers, hundreds of drivers and heavy equipment operators worked here. The operational development of the project and management of the construction lay on the shoulders of the 605th Directorate of Special Construction of the USSR Ministry of Medium Machine Building.

It was these people who, at the cost of incredible efforts and their own health, prevented the development of the disaster, kept the radioactive "infection" within the minimum permissible limits. Almost 95% of the ejected radioactive fuel is within the Shelter.

The main body of liquidators from various units and divisions, as well as civilian specialists, were located outside the 30-kilometer exclusion zone; they tried to place people according to the wind rose in the most favorable direction from the NPP — in the south. Therefore, each working day included long trips “there and back”.

“The daily routine was as follows: wake up at 6 am, get yourself in order, have breakfast. At 7 am — loading into a vehicle, at 8 am — already at the Chernobyl NPP. We received dosimeters. Chemical reconnaissance officers determined the degree of contamination of the places where we would work, and depending on the radioactive contamination of these places, the time we would work was planned (an hour, 1.5 hours, 2 hours)... during the time of work in the regiment, I never heard of any of the liquidators refusing to go to the Chernobyl NPP. If you have to, then you have to. Working at the station was considered very prestigious, so each battalion commander strove to have his battalion work at the Chernobyl NPP.”

Sergey Kolpakov-Miroshnichenko "Chernobyl Pain"

According to the liquidators' recollections, one of the most unpleasant things that could happen was a negative decision at the dosimetry post that released the transport from the zone. If the radiation level exceeded the permissible level even after "washing", then the vehicle was not released beyond the post, which meant that the crew and workers now had to get out by hitchhiking, and then solve the problems with the transport already at the location. However, the work at the PUSO was also not easy: they had to work in the hottest weather, wrapped in rubber raincoats, full sets of OZK, without taking off their respirators and glasses because of splashes and water dust with suspended radioactive particles flying in all directions.

"A young blond guy, a PUSO cleaner, says:

- We have a 12-hour shift - from 8 to 8 in the evening, or all night until 8 in the morning... It's easier at night - it's not hot, and there are fewer cars, you can take a nap... And they write 0.6 radiks per shift. If I can hold out at PUSO, I'll be home in a month... I'm from Simferopol. I returned from the army six months ago, got married three months ago, and then to Chernobyl - paz-a-alte..."

Sergey Mirny "Living Force. Diary of a Liquidator"

But not all liquidators managed to settle in relatively safe places. The most valuable and necessary personnel lived right at the station in the immediate vicinity of the destroyed fourth power unit.

“The entrance to the basement is unremarkable. The light bulbs in heavy wire lampshades shine dimly, people slide like shadows along the walls, voices are muffled, as if heard through cotton wool. After another pair of doors are being battened down, I enter a large room, the size of which is difficult to estimate because of the semi-darkness. It is very humid, there is almost no air circulation, wooden two-tiered bunks in several rows are in the way. People sleep on them; the most sought-after personnel of US-605 are quartered here, crane operators, excavator operators, welders, those who are always in great demand, those who already glow independently at night from constant overexposure, so they do not need light ... Individual bunks are covered with sheets. Many have drying foot wraps and underwear tucked under the edges. An electric razor hums quietly. A man with an improbably white, ghoul-like face sits on the lower bunk, monotonously rocking left and right. Seeing me, he stops rocking and says in an apologetic tone:

— I've lost sleep, I can't tell the difference between day and night, I live only from shift to shift. What's the date today?

— The sixth of August, — I hand him a cigarette. He immediately lights up greedily, without hiding."

Sergey Belyakov "Liquidator"

The work of the liquidators is a testament to the courage and heroism of peacetime; the largest ecological catastrophe was defeated thanks to the incredible efforts of ordinary people.



Consequences

The explosion killed two employees of the station. Another 29 people died within a month in Moscow clinics due to the effects of acute radiation sickness. In the following years, more than 60 people died directly from radiation factors, dozens more became victims of accidents (road accidents, accidents at the construction site) during the operation to eliminate the consequences of the accident. Thousands of people, one way or another, suffer from acquired diseases of the thyroid gland, diseases of the circulatory system, psychoneurological disorders for many years after the accident.

Due to the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, a significant part of the Kyiv and Zhitomir regions of Ukraine, a large territory in neighboring Belarus and part of the Bryansk region of Russia were exposed to radiation contamination, which entailed the resettlement of people and the introduction of a special pass regime.

Two large cities were completely resettled: Pripyat with a population of about 50 thousand people and Chernobyl with a population of 13 thousand, many villages and towns in the exclusion zone ceased to exist - their residents became forced refugees supported by the state. More than 350 thousand people were resettled immediately after the accident. Few dared to return home, about 1.5 thousand people soon after the tragedy moved into their homes. These were mainly elderly people who found it difficult to tear themselves away from their roots, who could not be helped by relatives on the "mainland", today only about 300 people live in the exclusion zone, not counting those who work on a rotational basis, and there are about five thousand of them.

It was the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant that called into question the further development of nuclear energy.

Developed countries began to consider the use of alternative methods of energy production, the construction of nuclear power plants around the world was suspended, a broad public discussion arose about the acceptability of the environmental risks associated with the activities of nuclear power plants. The nuclear sector is most developed in European countries, for example, in France the share of nuclear power plants in the total output is more than 70%, in Lithuania the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant produced more energy than the entire country consumed, in total the share of peaceful atoms in the world is about 3%. However, to this day, all alternatives to nuclear energy have an impressive set of disadvantages. This type of energy allows to reduce greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere and, during normal operation, carries significantly fewer risks to the environment than other types of energy generation. And while thermonuclear fusion remains an unattainable dream of mankind, we will witness the development of peaceful atoms.

[Jaak]

Ah yes , the soviet way of doing this - cover it up and if that fails then blame somebody else .
Kyshtym disaster ( Кыштымская авария) was in some ways worse than Chernobyl incident. Was that also made by west ?
Was the Lake Karachay polluted by the west ? That dumping ground is going to pollute groundwater for eons .
According to a report by the Worldwatch Institute on nuclear waste, Karachay is the most polluted (open-air) place on Earth from a radiological point of view.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay

[Russian Bear]

Posted by Jaak (here)
Ah yes , the soviet way of doing this - cover it up and if that fails then blame somebody else .
Kyshtym disaster ( Кыштымская авария) was in some ways worse than Chernobyl incident. Was that also made by west ?
Was the Lake Karachay polluted by the west ? That dumping ground is going to pollute groundwater for eons .
According to a report by the Worldwatch Institute on nuclear waste, Karachay is the most polluted (open-air) place on Earth from a radiological point of view.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay

I know about these disasters that you mentioned, of course I haven't studied them in detail, but I think that negligence played a role there too. Yes, I made the title of the article loud, it shows intentional planned sabotage inside the country itself. I haven't published the KGB reports yet, where this was also indicated. Recruitment of elites by Western intelligence agencies and their betrayal, someone inside the country really wanted the collapse of the USSR and destabilization of the situation in it. When the KGB and the creators of the nuclear power plant themselves wrote letters to higher authorities with comments, and as a result there was no reaction to correct the situation, as if all the letters were thrown into the trash. There were serious violations on many points. If the top responded to all the comments, this could have been avoided. Because of betrayal, the USSR collapsed. It's like the situation with Chernobyl.
(History) The collapse of the USSR. How the Russians were betrayed: the collapse of the USSR is the final division of the Russian people
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/sho...=1#post1664094

I think I'll publish the KGB documents later, they just need to be formatted and translated.