water were purged out of the steam, and thence used to turn the huge turbines themselves.
Thereafter the spent and cooler (but still very hot) steam entered the condensation tanks, where the looped pipes from the cooling pond turned it back into liquid water. Not one molecule of that water ever reached the outside world. That system was completely closed — and a good thing for everyone nearby, since in their passage through the core those molecules of water dissolved out particles of metals from the pipes, and many of those particles were radioactive. Only the radioactively clean waters from the sealed cooling circuit went back into the pond — and sometimes, when it overflowed in spring thaws and autumn rains, into the Pripyat River and the drinking-water supplies for millions of Ukrainians as far south as the city of Kiev.
Sheranchuk's responsibilities ended with the circulating water systems. His concerns, however, did not. He took Deputy Director Simyon Smin as his model, and what Sheranchuk did was what he thought Smin would have done in the same circumstances.
For Sheranchuk admired the Deputy Director more than any other man alive. It was not only that he owed Smin gratitude for rescuing him from a dead-end job on a peat-burning power plant almost at the end of its life. Watching Smin, he had seen how a skillful and determined man could overcome all obstacles and find a way around all problems to make this complicated network of systems called the 'Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station' fulfill its obligations. He had learned a lot from Smin, and not the least thing he had learned was that the whole plant was the concern of everyone who worked in it.
It was a fact of life with the RBMK-1000 reactor that it was given to fluctuations in its power output. When they happened, they needed to be controlled. There were three basic ways of doing that. One was to thrust into the mass of uranium and graphite that was the core of the reactor rods of a metal that would soak up neutrons and slow down the reaction. That was the classic, time-honored way. More than forty years before, Enrico Fermi had controlled his first ever nuclear pile in Chicago in just that manner. Another was simply to flood the reactor with additional water to slow it down, or cut down the flow to speed it up; water, too, soaked up neutrons, and the more of it that was present, the fewer atoms would be fractured to release the heat that made the steam.
The third method was more subtle. Inside the thick containment shell of the RBMK, the graphite bricks, fuel rods, and water pipes that comprised the reactor itself were surrounded by an artificial atmosphere composed of two gases, helium and nitrogen. This was done for two reasons. One was that the helium-nitrogen mixture kept out the oxygen of the air, and therefore the hot graphite bricks could not catch fire. The other reason was part of the control system. The gases did not conduct heat in the same degree, so that by adding one or the other, the heat transfer capacity of that atmosphere could be changed, up or down as desired; the reactor would obediently run a little hotter or a little colder, and so the small glitches in performance could be smoothed out.
Usually.
Of course, no human being could watch the instrument readings carefully enough and calculate the necessary measures fast enough to take the right action every time.
It is the same with modern, high-performance aircraft. If the pilot takes his hands off the controls of a conventional light plane, the thing will continue to fly itself reasonably well, for a while at least. If he takes his hands off the controls of a modern fighter, it will crash. Even if he stays on the controls, he can't fly the plane by himself. That is simply not possible. Too many things must be done too rapidly, and the human brain doesn't work fast enough to do the job. A computer flies the plane, the pilot only tells the computer what he wants it to do.
It was the same with the RBMK. The human operators only told the cybernetic system what they wanted. The built-in computers dealt with the moment-by-moment fluctuations. The operators could read the instruments, and they were wonderfully sensitive devices, most of them imported at vast expense from Western suppliers, but in any emergency the instant responses would have to come from the computers — which meant, really, that they were the ones upon whom the performance of the entire immense complex depended. Many others could help to make it succeed. But it was only they, and the handful of operators in the control room itself, who could, at any moment, make it catastrophically fail.
Chapter 3
Smin's mother, who has been a widow almost as long as Smin has been alive, lives in a four-room flat in an apartment building on the outskirts of Kiev. This causes a lot of talk among her neighbors. The official allowance for housing in the Soviet Union is nine square meters per person, and here this old woman, who does not even have a job, occupies nearly forty. It is true that old Aftasia Smin is a Party member from the earliest days, but it is also true that she has taken no active part for many years. So the talk of the neighbors is not about Aftasia's status as a veteran of the Civil War but about the real reason she has such a fine apartment. It is, her neighbors tell each other wisely, only because her son is in a high position; and in this the neighbors are right.
When Smin got to his mother's flat he discovered that the surprise was really a surprise. It was an American — two Americans, in fact, for there was a man and his wife.
Young Vassili Smin, who had been complaining for two hours about the prospect of sleeping another night on Babushka's folding Army cot, stopped complaining when he saw the American and the American's tall, young, blonde wife in the tailored canary-yellow slacks and the American's digital watch that told the time not only in Kiev but in Los Angeles as well. Smin saw that his son had fallen in love. He only hoped that
Vassili would somehow manage to refrain from offering to buy the watch from the American who, it turned out, was Smin's second cousin. 'You remember,' Smin's mother crowed, 'I told you about my cousin Yerim, who went to America in 1923? This is his grandson! And this is his wife! He makes for television films about a black man!'
The second cousin's name was nothing like Yerim Skaz-chenko. It was Dean Garfield, but he was still family — family enough to have brought gifts for everyone, although he couldn't have been sure when he left Los Angeles that he would find any particular family members to give gifts to. So they were sort of all-purpose gifts. There was a silver tie clip with a Statue of Liberty on it for Smin, a cashmere sweater for his wife (it was too bad that it was so very tight on her, but apparently it had been cut for an American figure), a pocket calculator for Vassili, a box of liqueur chocolates for everybody, even a wonderfully thick, rich silk scarf which went to Aftasia. Best of all, there was a whole box of video tape cassettes for the whole family, and these were not simply American films which others might have. They were copies of the actual network television program Dean Garfield had actually produced—'Number three in the ratings,' Garfield modestly announced.
What made conversation hard was that Garfield spoke only English, his wife just English and a little Spanish; neither knew anything of Smin's own Russian, Ukrainian, French, or German. Nor were Vassili's two years of English good enough for more than half of what Dean Garfield and his wife, Can-dace, said.
Smin's mother had provided for that problem. Aftasia had invited a young Ukrainian couple named Didchuk from the flat just below, both teachers of English in the local schools. Smin could see that they were both a little ill at ease in the presence of a senior Party member who drove a black Chaika with yellow fog lights, not to mention two actual Americans, and he put himself out to be nice to them.
While the young woman was helping Vassili's excited questioning of the glamorous American cousins, Smin chatted easily with the man about the relative merits of the Chaika over the Zhiguli, which he praised, the Moskvich (yes, a fine car, but it needs too much work to keep it running) and the Volga, which he declared in some ways was almost better than his own. The teacher listened intendy and humbly asked Smin's opinion of the Zaparozhets, which he and his wife had thought of purchasing in a year or two. The Zaparozhets was the cheapest car made in the USSR, but Smin had praise for it, too. After all, he reminded the man, it was Ukraine-made and a very good value for the money—'Only, be sure you get one that was manufactured early in the month, before they storm,' he said. The teacher nodded gratefully for the advice, though he did not need it. After all, what Soviet citizen did not know all about the merits of every Soviet car, even if his best hope of owning one lay somewhere in the twenty-first century?
In any case, Didchuk discovered, he had lost Smin's attention. The older man was gazing at his wife, and there was half a smile on his face.
For when Selena Smin got a good look at this blonde California goddess, she had taken the first opportunity to disappear into the flat's tiny lavatory. When she came out, her eyelashes were darker, her lips were redder, and
