"Let's talk about what happened in the early hours of this morning."

After a few questions of foreshadowing, Besonova gradually got to the point.

Hearing this, Gatlov subconsciously glanced at the three players not far away, he had already seen that this time the expert group was led by three people over there, they were standing at the other end of the room, as if they were acting as a jury, exchanging opinions from time to time, but their voices were very small, and there was a distance between the two sides, and Gatlov didn't know what they were talking about.

The Associate Engineer could only retract his gaze and rewind his thoughts to a few hours ago.

"In the early morning of the 26th, we were working on a safety experiment." "You should be aware of the content of the experiment, because today in January, the director of the Bryukhanov plant reported the test procedure to the Hydropower Engineering Research Institute......"

However, as soon as he said this, he was rudely interrupted by Bessonova, "Comrade Gatlov, you only need to tell us everything in detail and accurately, as for what we already know and what we don't know, we don't bother you to worry about it, and if possible, please explain the principles involved, and Dr. Yevrem also wants to know how this accident happened." ”

"Okay."

Although Besonova's statement made Dhatrov feel a little strange, and he didn't understand why experts in acute radiation sickness should listen to the accident analysis, he still agreed, sorted out his thoughts again, and continued, "In short, we have a safety experiment to do, the time was originally scheduled for April 25th, before the reactor was shut down for maintenance, as you know, the reactor always needs regular maintenance, and we can also take this opportunity to do a very simple safety experiment."

"Chernobyl uses a graphite-moderated boiling water reactor, and the plant's pumps can continuously pour cold water into the reactor to generate steam-driven turbines to generate electricity, while carrying hot wastewater away from the reactor to ensure that the core is not melted. I'm sure you can also see how important the pump is in this process, and we need to do everything we can to ensure the normal operation of the pump.

"In the event of an emergency, even if all the power is cut off at the nuclear power plant, we still have a backup diesel generator to power the pumps, but it takes a short time for the diesel generators to start, which means we have to keep the pumps running for a short period of time."

Dyatlov tried to speak in sufficient detail to ensure that Dr. Yevrem, a layman, could understand.

"This safety experiment is to solve this problem, we are thinking about using the inertia of the steam turbine, because when the power is off, the steam is still being generated, and the steam turbine is still rotating, so that we can generate electricity, and we can borrow this part of the power to tide us over.

"At 1 p.m., we reduced the power of reactor No. 4 to 1,600 megawatts as originally planned, shut down a steam turbine, and at 2 o'clock, disconnected the emergency core cooling system and multiple forced circulation circuits to prepare for the safety experiment designed by Chief Engineer Fuming, but at this time we received a call from Kyiv, saying that there was an accident at a small power station there, and Kyiv is now short of electricity, and asked us to push back the shutdown of the reactor.

"What can I do? "I also went home and slept for a few hours, and when I came back it was already 11 o'clock at night, and an hour earlier, I received permission to continue to reduce the power, so I contacted Yuri Tlegub, the reactor's foreman on duty at the time, and Akimov, who replaced him, and I made it clear that I wanted them to continue to reduce the power to 700 to 1,000 megawatts according to the requirements of the experiment."

"After arranging the mission, I left the control room, looked around, observed the situation before the power outage, and returned to the control room at half past twelve, when there were Akimov, Toptunov, Stolyarchuk, Tlegub, who was supposed to be off work, a few other interns and others.

"I noticed that the reactor's power had dropped to 30 megawatts, far below the 700 megawatts needed for the experiment, so I asked Akimov what was going on, and he said that shutting down the local automatic control system and changing to manual control should solve the problem, so I gave him permission to continue to increase the power.

"Then I left the control room again to look at the turbines, and when I came back, the reactor power had risen to about 200 megawatts, and we finally decided to do the experiment at that power, and I called all the experimenters for a briefing and then asked them to go back to their posts and get ready.

"The safety experiment started at 1:23:04 and everything went smoothly and everything was carried out according to the regulations, and I was busy studying the readings on the meter before I heard Akimov say shut down the reactor. With that, he reached out and pressed the emergency power reduction button. It didn't take long for me to hear an explosion. ”

"What happened?" Besonova asked.

"That's what I want to know," Dyatloff said, "I left the control room immediately after the explosion and inspected the situation outside, and it turned out that for some reason, there was an explosion in the emergency water tank of the protection and control system, which was very huge, 110 cubic meters, and such an explosion would tear down the roof, and in severe cases, it would blow up the entire reactor unit, but fortunately, the reactor below was still intact, and I immediately ordered water to be injected into the reactor to keep the reactor stable, After that, he joined the rescue with others.

"At about three o'clock, I received a phone call and went to the Civil Defense Headquarters to report the accident to the director of the Bryukhanov plant, and then I came to the Pripyat Medical Center for treatment because I was unwell, and that's all I knew."

"The reactor is safe, can you be sure? Comrade Gatlov. ”

"Yes, I'm sure." The deputy chief engineer affirmed, "I have been around the reactor since the incident. ”

"What about radiation?"

"Gorbachenko's radiometer showed that the background radiation at that time was 1,000 microroentgenium per second."

"It doesn't sound great."

"Yes, there's no doubt that there's a nuclear leak there, but luckily it's still under control, and we'll get through it." Dyatrov said.

"Yes, but as far as I know, 3.6 Roentgen is exactly the upper limit of a small radiometer." Besonova coldly threw out the question, "Why, the nuclear power plant doesn't have a larger range measuring instrument?" ”

Dhatrov was silent for a moment, "Yes, yes, we have a 1000 Roentgen gauge, but it was locked in a safe and buried under the wreckage of the building. But the measurements should not deviate too much, after all, it is just a water tank. ”