Part one of this series examined the life of Viktor Brukhanov up until 1986, when he was arguably riding on top of the world as the director of the top nuclear power station in the Soviet Union. But behind the scenes, Brukhanov was managing a house of cards that was going to collapse sooner or later.
*NOTE FROM THE EDITOR*
I apologize for the horrible thumbnail quality of Part 1, no matter how many times I have formatted it, Substack’s smart crop feature wants to just show the upper half of Brukhanov’s head. Again, my apologies.
For years, KGB informants had reported myriad code violations, and outright dangerous conditions throughout the facility. But party leaders allowed the problems to persist because they needed the electricity that was being produced out of Chernobyl. And what did it matter, when the inevitable failure occurred they would have their scapegoat, Viktor Brukhanov? No one could have foreseen the size of the failure that finally occurred, although everyone involved at the top should have anticipated the impact any nuclear crisis might have on millions of people. Before going any further, you will note how the Viktor Brukhanov depicted here is a far cry from the villain presented in the HBO miniseries Chernobyl. In reality, he was soft spoken, and generally well liked. In other words, he was a politician dealing with the bad hand he had been dealt. Since 1972, he had been playing a game he was bound to lose.
April 25-26, 1986: The Night of the Disaster
It isn't clear where the Brukhanov family was spending the night when the reactor exploded. During the day, Brukhanov had been in Kiev for a party meeting. After the meeting, he proceeded to drive back to Pripyat with his family. They went back to their apartment in Pripyat or stayed on the outskirts of town in the family Dacha.1 According to records, he called the plant before retiring for the evening. Everything was fine.2
At approximately 2 A.M., he received a call.3
After answering the phone, he knew the problem was big. Why else would they call him? He dressed and left for the plant.4 At 50 degrees Fahrenheit, the night was mild.5
As he got closer to the plant he could see the problem. Reactor Unit 4 was lit up with a red glow.
First he went to his office on the third floor of the main administrative building. But he wanted to see the fire up close. He walked the 600 meters to the reactor, where he saw what he thought were rocks. In time he would learn he had been exposed to radioactive graphite the explosion had thrown in every direction.6
The building next to the reactor was completely destroyed. Even then his mind refused to believe the reactor might have suffered the same fate.
Once he arrived in the control room, he found Anatoly Dyatlov (deputy chief engineer) and Aleksandr Akimov, but they were unable to clarify the situation.
Frustrated, Brukhanov returned to his office and sent a coded message to his superiors in Moscow, letting them know there was a situation with the plant. And he ordered the bunker under the administrative building opened. There was one certainty in his mind now: he was going to prison.7
This is what Brukhanov told Moscow:
At approximately 2:00 a.m., an accident occurred during some testing that was being conducted at the fourth block. There was an explosion and a fire. Parts of the fourth block are destroyed. There are victims. The fire has been extinguished. Apparently the reactor was not damaged, it has been shut down.8
Mikhail Gorbachev was contacted and updated with this admittedly incomplete information.9 But the General Secretary was confused as to why anyone would bother him since the RBMK nuclear reactor was considered a hundred percent safe.10
The Emergency Meeting
The bunker had been designed to accommodate people during a nuclear attack. On this night, plant supervisors packed the room, which was equipped with dozens of phones. Brukhanov spent much of his time on calls with Moscow and Kiev, answering the barrage of questions that were coming his way.
Brukhanov sent deputy chief of Unit 1, Vladimir Chugunov, and deputy chief engineer, Anatolii Sitnikov to Unit 4 to assess the overall situation and make sure the unit's cooling system was on. They also had instructions to help as needed.
There are different accounts of what happened that night, and they will be explored as we look at other versions of the event. The most important thing to understand was the confusion as each supervisor came to the impossible conclusion that the reactor was destroyed.
Brukhanov was one of the slowest to believe the reactor was gone, giving quiet responses to the plant's civil defense chief, Serafim Vorobyev, who kept reporting deadly levels of radiation in the air around the plant.
Vorobyev wanted the people of Pripyat warned of the danger.11 Brukhanov was in shock and wanted time to think. Eventually he simply told Vorobyev to go away.
At some point Dyatlov stumbled into the bunker, pale and sick. He had taken a near lethal dose of radiation.12
The air outside now had a metallic taste to it. A clear sign the air was contaminated.
Scapegoat
Brukhanov wasn't worried about a bullet to the back of the head or a stint in a hellish gulag. After all, they were no longer in the Stalin years. But prison in a hard labor camp was certainly in order. Even in Gorbachev's 1980s Soviet Union, the man in charge took most, if not all, of the blame. The process was clear: first, he would be relieved of power. Then would come a long, humiliating trial. Finally, prison. His dreams of being awarded 'Hero of the Soviet Union' had evaporated.
For sixteen years, officials had exempted violations, giving Brukhanov impossible deadlines despite critical product shortages. Now, on this mild spring night, he mentally prepared for the inevitable onslaught of party officials. These were men who had no real understanding of nuclear power plants but were experts in the dangerous political game of obtaining and retaining power. Brukhanov, a loyal party member seasoned in political navigation, knew what was coming.
Still, Brukhanov clung to hope that things weren't as bad as they seemed. But reality was worse – all his nightmares had multiplied and come true.
Bureaucracy
As morning broke, the true scale of the disaster began to emerge, along with the Soviet bureaucratic machine's response.
Around 8 in the morning, technicians were gathering samples outside the facility's perimeter that proved radiation was indeed leaking. But this information wasn't going to be reported to the population any time soon.
By 9, Vladimir Malomuzh, the Kiev region deputy head of the Party, arrived and had taken over the crisis. He instructed Brukhanov to write up a report that would be sent to Moscow. The plant party staff wrote one page and gave it to Brukhanov to sign.
Notably, the report presented a distorted account of what was actually going on. None of the information the technicians had gathered earlier made it into the report. It was nothing more than a document saying he was responsible for whatever had happened.
No one wanted to admit the reactor was either severely damaged or had exploded. Viktor Brukhanov was already being set up to take the fall.
Also at 9, a newly formed commission left Moscow en route to Pripyat. Overnight, the chairman of the Bureau of Fuel-energetic Complex had been chosen to head up this team. This chairman, Boris Evdokimovich Scherbina, would become forever linked to the disaster.
Through the night and into the morning, witnesses remembered Brukhanov as being more subdued than usual. He barely spoke and did not believe the reactor in Unit 4 had been damaged.
But Brukhanov finally realized the radiation leak was real and the reactor was badly damaged. This was a direct threat to the people of the city he had built. He wanted to inform Pripyat, but his superiors told him to not panic and just wait.
It was clear he was no longer in any position to make any decisions. He was forced to listen as they fell into the usual Soviet bureaucratic response to a crisis: avoid responsibility.13
Meanwhile, the citizens of Pripyat were enjoying a nice holiday weekend. It was spring, warm, beautiful, and the air was now dangerous enough to kill them.
With the arrival of outside officials, Brukhanov had been stripped of any real power. Life for him was now a waiting game. As has been stated, he was going to jail. But for how long?
In the next segment, we break away from Viktor Brukhanov and take a look at Mikhail Gorbachev, and how he approached the first major challenge he faced as a leader.
There was no mention of the power test that would lead to the disaster. The test was considered to be part of routine maintenance, so there was no need to inform Brukhanov.
It was supposedly a last minute decision to stay in the vacation home.
Pripyat was only a few miles away. Plant workers did not live in the town of Chernobyl. This was due to safety requirements.
Amazingly, Viktor Brukhanov lived to be 85 years old.
Midnight in Chernobyl, 96.
Vorotnikov, V.I. A eto bylo tak: Iz dnevnika chlena PB TsK KPSS(Moscow, Soyuz Veteranov Knigoizdaniya: SIMAR, 1995), p. 95
Regulations required Vorobyev to report any radiation detected outside the plant.
Diatlov was suffering with acute radiation poisoning. Although he lived, he would never fully recover