Frederik Pohl - Chernobyl

The duty engineer that morning happened to be an Englishman; he had no difficulty in understanding the question. "Do you mean the Windscale sort of thing? Yes, I think so. That was a Wigner-effect event." He paused to see if he would be required to explain the Wigner effect. The Wigner effect is a change that takes place in the molecular structure of graphite after long exposure to ionizing radiation. The molecular structure stores energy from the radiation. This has potential dangers, and so once a year graphite moderators of that sort must be "annealed"-which is to say, heated up suffi-ciendy that the molecular bonds slacken and relax when cooled. In England's Windscale in 1957 that heating got away from its operators, causing the graphite to burn and destroy the reactor.

"One moment," the Ukrainian said. There was a sound of muffled voices, and then the man came back on the line. "No, not in regard to the Wigner effect," he said. "I ask of control measures. Of ways for dealing with such an event if it should occur."

"You mean to ask how they put it out?" the Englishman said. "They simply kept drenching the thing with water. Diverted most of a river onto it, if I remember aright. Wait just a moment, I think we do have some documents in the file-shall I mail you a set?"

The voice on the phone disappeared again. When it returned it said politely, "No, thank you, we do not think that will be necessary."

The Englishman hung up, finished his tea, and examined the pot to see if there might be another blackened cup left. That, he thought, had been a curious call. He looked through his files to see what he could find about graphite-moderated reactors in the USSR. There were plenty of them, but nothing that seemed relevant to the call.

Still, he wanted to tell someone about it and so, after a moment's consideration, he picked up the telephone again and dialed a colleague in the United Kingdom. "What do you reckon they're up to?" he asked, after recounting the call.

The colleague yawned; he had been sleeping in on a rainy English weekend morning. "Russkies," he said, explaining everything. "You know what they like those graphite reactors for. The things are useful to make a little plutonium on the side. They don't want to know about controlling anything, in my opinion. They're simply hoping to find some better ways of increasing the yield."

"It could be that, I suppose," said the man in Vienna. "They've got a mass of those RBMKs going. I found a note from one of our masters, warning that the beasts were not entirely safe."

"That would be Marshall, I expert," said the one in London. That was Lord Walter Marshall, head of the United Kingdom's General Electricity Generating Board. "That was donkey's years ago, wasn't it?"

The engineer in Vienna said doubtfully, "You don't think I should report it to someone?"

"Report it to whom? And what is there to report? No," said the voice from England, "I'd forget it if I were you. It's what I'm going to do myself."

Saturday, April 26

If Vassili Smin lived in Moscow, he might easily be one of the westernized, pampered, English-speaking, Playboy-reading "Golden Youth" whose Wrangler jeans and Gucci loafers make the disco scene in the Blue Bird nightclub. Vassili has as much going for him as any of the spoiled Moscow darlings. His father is high in the Party, as well as being the Deputy Director of an immense industrial complex. Vassili himself had been a leader in the kids' patriotism-Communism-scouting organization, the Pioneers, had moved up to join the Komsomol as soon as he reached the tenth grade in school. He has spending money almost equal to the wages of the peasant girl who lovingly makes his bed every morning and unfailingly shines his shoes. Vassili, however, does not live in Moscow. He lives in a small town a hundred and thirty kilometers from Kiev, and even in the city of Kiev the most pampered youth are less spoiled than in the capital. The other thing that makes Vassili unlike Moscow's Golden Youth is that he has a lot of his father in him. He certainly wishes to succeed. But he knows that the way to do that is, first, to make sure of getting into a first-rate college, and, second, to join the Party as soon as he can. The Party meetings will surely be boring, but there is no other way to a high position. And, although his father has the influence to get him into almost any college in the USSR, he is far from powerful enough to plant his boy in a leadership post for life. Vassili knows that what happens after college will depend on his grades.

It would also, Vassili knew, be helped along a good deal by commendations from his Komsomol leaders, but that was not the only reason why, that Saturday morning, he left his grandmother's apartment and took a bus to the outskirts of Kiev. Then he stood on the edge of the Pripyat road, holding a five-ruble note in the air for passing vehicle drivers to see. He was not merely reluctant to miss a day's school, or the Saturday-afternoon meeting of the league for young Communists, the Komsomol, which would put the finishing touches on their May Day plans. He was also worried.

A five-ruble note was statistically certain to get a ride from at least half of any random selection of truck, ambulance, or private-car drivers, but this morning it wasn't working. There was traffic in plenty, but most of it was official and all of it in a hurry. Vassili saw a dozen fire trucks, military vehicles, and militia cars go by before, at last, a lumbering farm truck pulled up beside him. "What's going on?" the driver demanded, leaning out of the window without opening the door.

"I don't know," said Vassili, waving the bill at him. "But I have to get to Pripyat."

"Pripyat! I'm not going to Pripyat. But I can take you fifty kilometers."

"For one ruble, not five," Vassili bargained, and settled finally for two. Thrown into the bargain was nearly half an hour's conversation from the collective farmer, divided almost equally between complaints about the stinginess of customers at the free market in Kiev and invective against the other drivers on the road, who raced past him at a hundred and twenty kilometers an hour. Nor were they the normal assortment of trucks and buses. The bulk of the traffic still seemed to be emergency vehicles, all in a hurry, and Vassili was beginning to get seriously worried.

When at last the kolkhozist turned off onto a side road, Vassili was picked up almost at once by a soldier who was driving, of all things, a water cannon. "What, is there a riot in Pripyat?" Vassili begged, aghast at the notion, but the driver only shook his head. His orders were to go to a checkpoint thirty kilometers south of the town. He had no other information; it was all in a day's work to him, and he resented losing his Saturday to it.

Then they came to the checkpoint.

Vassili hopped down from the truck, frowning. There was a barricade across the road. Civilian vehicles had been turned back, and had already worn muddy ruts through the margins of a field of sunflowers as they turned around. There were soldiers there manning the barricades, and with them a rabble of young people-young people?-why, Vassili saw with shock, they were Komsomols! From his own troop! One of them his friend Boris Sheranchuk; and as soon as Boris saw him he waved him over. "Here, we've been called out to help the militiamen, so you're on duty too."

"Duty for what?"

"To make sure no one gets past, of course. There's been an awful accident at the power plant."

"An accident!" Vassili cried. "Have you-do you know where my father is?"

"I don't even know where my own father is. It's bad. People have been killed."

For all that long day Boris, Vassili, and the other young Communists were kept on duty. It was not their job to turn vehicles back, that was work for the militiamen. For the Komsomols the task was to make sure that none of the diverted vehicles got hopelessly stuck in the sunflower field, to try to keep them from doing more damage to the crop than was absolutely necessary, and, when trucks turned up with water and food for the guards, to help serve it. It was not glamorous work. And it was not enjoyable, for no one seemed to have any hard facts about what was happening at Chernobyl. The traffic was almost all one-way going in. The vehicles that came back were generally ambulances, and none of them stopped.