Frederik Pohl: Chernobyl

"There was no accident in Kyshtym in 1958," said Smin positively, and wondered if he were speaking the truth.

By the time Smin had his guests out of doors it was already two-twenty. He had managed to find out from the control-room operators that Reactor No. 4 was still at full power, so the experiment was not yet ready to begin. That meant he had a little more time. He used it to be a gracious host. "See this lake?" he said, indicating the lake along whose borders they were walking. "It is our cooling pond. Six kilometers long, and, as you see, a beautiful thing in itself. And it is stocked with fish; our local sportsmen say the fishing is even better here than in the Pripyat River."

"Why is that?" the younger Yemeni asked politely.

"Because the water is warmed all through the year."

"But I see ice in it," the older one said dryly.

"But this is the Ukraine!" Smin said, smiling. "Of course our winters are terribly cold. But even in the worst of the winter the pond does not freeze over entirely here, and the fish love it. And now-see the trees, the flowers; it is spring." He stopped and gazed up at the towering buildings that housed Reactors 3 and 4.

"From here," he said, "you can see how large the Chernobyl Power Station is. Four operating reactors, each one producing one thousand megawatts of electrical energy, enough to light an entire city of one million people. And we have already begun construction of two new ones, even larger. When they are finished we will be able to supply a city of seven million."

"We don't have any cities of seven million," said the older Yemeni. "Also, we don't have any lakes."

"With such power you can create all the lakes you wish," Smin said grandly. "Come, I will show you where the new reactors are already being begun."

And when they were on the lip of the giant excavation where the core of Reactor No. 5 would soon go, busy with excavation equipment and dump trucks carting the soil away, the Yemenis seemed still unsatisfied. "These also will be RBMK-1000s?" the older one asked.

"No, no. Each will be even larger, fifteen hundred megawatts electric rated output!"

"But still graphite reactors," mused the Yemeni. "Although some people say that this design is not as good as the pressurized water reactor, like those in the West."

"Ah, the West," said Smin good-naturedly, his mood improved since he had seen the dark-blue Volga car that would take the Yemenis away creeping cautiously toward them, among the rumbling trucks and bulldozers. "You see, in the first place, the Soviet Union also has pressurized-water reactors; we have both kinds in service. Each has its own special advantages. The Americans do not have this variety of choice. All of their nuclear energy comes from the submarine power plants."

The Yemeni looked puzzled. "What do submarines have to do with it?"

Smin smiled. "Do you know why the Americans stay with the pressurized-water reactors? It is because they are trapped in their own historical accidents. They are in a rut. The first power reactors ever built in America were designed for their nuclear submarines. Those had to be of the pressurized-water type, since nothing else would work inside the confined space of a submarine. Advanced models like our RBMKs simply cannot be used for submarine engines. So when at last the Americans decided to try to generate utility power with atomic energy, they simply built new and larger submarine engines. The RBMK is quite different, and by 'different' I mean 'better.' For one thing, it is extremely responsive. The American generators, like all pressurized-water generators, are only good for baseline power-they are very slow to start and very slow to stop. The RBMK is quick to respond. If there is a sudden need for power, an RBMK can be brought on line in less than one hour. And-well, I remind you of safety. Three Mile Island was a pressurized-water reactor, you know."

"If all that is so," said the older Yemeni suddenly, "then why have you not shown us Reactor Number Four?"

Smin shook his head compassionately. "Unfortunately, Reactor Number Four is about to be taken out of service for maintenance. So no one is permitted in the area because of some slight risk of radiation exposure, you see. It is a precaution very strictly enforced-you see, in spite of glasnost articles in the newspapers, we really are very cautious. What a pity! But perhaps you could come back tomorrow, when things will be tranquil again?"

"Unfortunately," said the Yemeni glumly, "tonight we stay in the Dniepro Hotel in Kiev, and fly to Moscow in the morning."

"What a pity," repeated Smin, who had known that all along. "And now your car is here! I hope you have had an interesting visit with us, here at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station, and I look forward to our meeting again!"

Smin was still thinking of the Yemenis when he stopped, simply as a precaution, to make sure the experiment was still ready to go before going up to the main control room. But when he heard what the shift operator had to say he forgot the Yemenis. "Canceled? Why is it canceled? What are we going to do with all those people?"

The shift operator sighed. "If you figure that out, please tell me; they are still here. All I know is that the power dispatchers in Kiev say we can't go off line now. I didn't speak to them; you'll have to ask the Director. What? No, he isn't here; I think he's in the turbine room below."

Smin put the phone down, frowning. Now, that was a nuisance. There were almost a dozen observers on hand. They had gathered at Chernobyl from as far away as Leningrad, power-plant managers and representatives of turbine builders and electrical engineers, for the single purpose of seeing how the experiment in generating extra power from residual heat and momentum after a reactor was shut down would work. The experiment should be beginning right now, which would mean they would all be getting into their cars and bothering somebody else before dark.

But now what?

The only person who could answer that was the Director, so Smin went looking for him. Smin was meticulous about making sure his workers dressed for their work, and set them a good example by putting on the dosimeter badge and the white cap and coveralls and cloth slippers before he walked into the turbine hall.

He also fitted the plugs in his ears. The turbine rooms, particularly the big one that combined the output of Reactors 3 and 4, were the noisiest places in the Chernobyl Power Station. Perhaps they were the noisiest places in the world, Smin thought, but he welcomed the noise. The scream of the steam in the turbines was good news. It meant that the heat of the dying atoms was spinning the great wheels and magically turning steam into electricity to feed the lights and radios and television sets and elevator motors of a quarter of the Ukrainian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic-with enough left over to export electricity to their Socialist neighbors in Poland and even Bulgaria and Romania.

What was less pleasing, he thought, remembering, was that the Yemenis had asked unpleasant questions. The worst was the one about Kyshtym.

Was there any truth to the story about Kyshtym?

People had asked him the same question at the IAEA in Vienna. They hadn't been put off as easily as the Yemenis, either. They had even handed him a copy of a book by the renegade, Zhores Medvedev, with a worrying story. It said that in 1958 some nuclear enterprise had gone terribly wrong in Soviet Siberia. Nuclear wastes-or something!-had somehow, unbelievably attained critical mass. They had exploded. Lakes were destroyed. Streams were poisoned. Villages were made uninhabitable, and a whole countryside had become a radioactive waste.

Could such a thing be true?

Smin confessed to himself that he did not know. Yet even if that story were true, Smin thought rebelliously, what he had said- most of what he had said to the Yemeni about such questions-was demonstrably quite true. Soviet nuclear power had never had an accident. At least not one that was related to the nuclear reactors, and certainly not at Chernobyl!