Chernobyl Nuclear Accident Congressional Hearings Transcript

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Looking at what we we view as the bottom line on the Chernobyl
situation . . . the need is great . . . and the time is now to move toward assisting
the Commonwealth of Independent States with their clearly precarious energy situation.
Many technologies exist that could address the problems in the CIS and we will
be happy to provide those technologies.
Long-term options such as nuclear energy and more immediate technologies such
as advanced combined cycle applications stand ready as proven remedies.
What we . . . and other industries . from this body ... is assistance
with handling the political implications of such an endeavor, and we certainly defer
to your expertise in this area. Ours is a technology mandate . . . and we have no
doubt can deliver in that area. The political mandate falls to you.
We would welcome the opportunity to join forces with the U.S.
Government . . . and help in providing the Commonwealth of Independent States
with safe, reliable, cost effective energy options now . . . and in the future.
Thank you.
Prepared Statement of Wolodymyr Yavorivsky, Chairman, Committee on
Chornobyl Supreme Rada of Ukraine
chornobyl: accident, tragedy, disaster
"The aftereffects of Chornobyl, these are in fact the aftereffects of the third world,
nuclear war which in April 1986 swept across our long-suffering homeland
Ukraine. —Wolodymyr Yavorivsky
The accident at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, in which only one reactor
#4 blew up, is unique in its lasting aftermaths. It led to the greatest catastrophe of
the 20th century, and caused the nation-wide disaster in Ukraine.
Geographically tied to the Ukrainian soil, it changed abruptly the lives of hundreds
of thousands of people not only in Ukraine, but in Byelorussia and Russia,
too. Its aftermaths could be compared to those of the nuclear 3rd world war. Nowadays
Chornobyl is not merely a geographical name of an ancient small town in
Ukrainian Polessye. It is the word that entered all the languages of the world as a
reminder, a warning and a call for joining efforts in wide international interaction
in the struggle for survival of mankind.
The tragedy of Chornobyl hit many people. The most horrible is that it affected
not only those living now, but also those not bom yet. Despite our strenuous efforts
this mishap will touch with its black wing the present and the following generations
of Ukrainian people and our neighbors on the Earth.
After the Chornobyl accident IJkraine was proclaimed the zone of ecological catastrophe.
Five years have passed after the day of this global tragedy. But, despite our
enormous and costly efforts, not much was done in the field of study and stabilization
of the radiological situation, improvement of health of hundreds of thousands
directly affected by Chornobyl. The difficulty of the problem becomes more vivid, its
solution gets more demanding economically and technically with time to pass.
The evaluation of the accident's scale and disastrous effects, as well as taking up
efficient measures for the minimization of the Chornobyl aftermaths, were considerably
hampered by the wrong approaches to the cause of the accident, identification
of those who concealed information about Chornobyl.
At the moment of the accident the reactor was operated with constructive defects
and it became the main cause of the disastrous development of the accident on
April 2, 1986.
The designers of RBMK-1000 reactor criminally neglected the operational regulations:
• Radiation Safety Regulations—8 items;
• General Safety Regulations—5 items.
The report made by Soviet experts at IAEA conference in August 1986 falsely
claimed the initial cause of the accident was an inconceivable combination of violations
of operating rules by the reactors' personnel". This interpretation adversely
affected the possibility of diagnosing the real cause of the accident at that time.
By the official accounts, 50 megacuries of the most dangerous radionuclides were
released to the environment. According to some scientists this figure is much bigger
and is about 1 billion curies. The scale of radioactive contamination is very large.
The contamination level of 46 per cent of Ukrainian territory is more than 1 curie
per square km. Most of the regions of Ukraine were affected, especially the districts
of Kiev, Zhitomir, Chernigov, Rovno and Volhynia regions.