The Dead Hand

23 Grigori Medvedev, p. 74.

24 “Urgent Report,” A. N. Makukhin, First Deputy Director, Ministry of Energy and Electrification, April 26, 1986, No. 1789-2c, Volkogonov Collection, Library of Congress, from Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, Reel 18, Container 27.

25 These comments were made on the twentieth anniversary of the accident. See BBC News, April 24, 2006, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/4918940.stm.

26 Chernyaev, p. 65.

27 V Politburo, p. 41.

28 Dmitri Volkogonov, Autopsy for an Empire: The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime (New York: Free Press, 1998), p. 478. Read reports Ligachev argued “for saying as little as possible,” and that a vote was taken in which Ligachev prevailed.

29 “Information about the accident at Chernobyl nuclear power station April 26, 1986,” Fond 89, Hoover. An essential guide to these documents is Larissa Soroka, Guide to the Microfilm Collection in the Hoover Institution Archives; Fond 89: Communist Party of the Soviet Union on Trial (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2001). An hour later, a second TASS statement said the accident was the first ever in the Soviet Union, and noted other accidents in other countries. Read, p. 175.

30 Volkogonov, pp. 478–479.

31 “Ot Sovieta Ministrov SSSR” [From the Council of Ministers USSR], Fond 89, Perechen 53, Delo 2, Hoover Institution.

32 A subsequent account claims the red glow was not the burning core, but a piece that had been blasted loose during the explosion. Alexander R. Sich, “Truth Was an Early Casualty,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/June 1996, pp. 32–42.

33 Michael Dobbs, Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire (New York: Knopf, 1997), p. 160.

34 Fond 89, Perechen 51, Delo 19, Hoover.

35 Reagan diary, April 30, 1986.

36 Fond 89, Perechen 53, Delo 6, Hoover. The memo carries a stamp by the Central Committee indicating it was circulated on May 16, two days after Gorbachev’s televised speech. In an interview in 2008 with Irina Makarova, Gubarev said Gorbachev seemed “absolutely in the dark about what was happening.” Gubarev later wrote a play, Sarcophagus, which suggested that the accident was due to operator and human error, not the design of the reactor.

37 Chernyaev, p. 66. Also see V Politburo, pp. 61–66.

38 Tarasenko, interview, Feb. 3, 2005.

39 Eduard Shevardnadze, The Future Belongs to Freedom (New York: Free Press, 1991), pp. 175–176.

40 Sergei Akhromeyev and Georgi M. Kornienko, Glazami Marshala i Diplomata (Moscow: International Relations, 1992), pp. 98–99.

41 Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Gody Trudnykh Reshenii [Years of Difficult Decisions] (Moscow: Alfa-print, 1993), pp. 46–55.

42 “Chernobyl’s Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-economic Impacts,” the Chernobyl Forum, 2003– 2005. In another estimate, at least six thousand more died from radiation exposure, and perhaps many more. David R. Marples, “The Decade of Despair,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May–June 1996, pp. 22–31.

43 Shultz, p. 724.

44 Reagan diary, May 20, 1986.

45 Shultz, pp. 716–717.

46 Chernyaev, p. 83. This was a reference to the nuclear-pumped X-ray laser that was being advocated by Teller, although Reagan did not envision a nuclear program.

47 Reagan, An American Life, p. 661. The Soviets were eager to do parallel experiments.

48 See USSR Nuclear Weapons Tests and Peaceful Nuclear Explosions: 1949 through 1990 Ministry of the Russian Federation for Atomic Energy, Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Russian Federal Nuclear Center VNIIEF, 1996. The U.S. data is from United States Nuclear Tests.

49 Frank von Hippel, Citizen Scientist: From the Environment to Dissent, a Leading Scientist Talks About the Future of the Planet (New York: Touchstone, 1991). An example of their brainstorming came in the first days after the Chernobyl accident. Von Hippel urged Velikhov to distribute potassium iodide tablets to the population, to forestall the uptake of radioactive iodine into the thyroid of people exposed. Velikhov rushed the idea to the Kremlin. On May 1, the Ministry of Foreign Trade was ordered to “urgently sign contracts to purchase from abroad the necessary amount of medications” and the Health Ministry to “examine the received offers.” Protocol No. 3, May 1, 1986, Fond 89, Perechen 51, Delo 19, Hoover. In the end, the advice was not taken out of fear of causing mass panic. Velikhov interview, 2004. According to a later report by the United Nations, radiation doses to the thyroid “were particularly high in those who were children at the time and drank milk with high levels of radioactive iodine. By 2002, more than 4000 thyroid cancer cases had been diagnosed in this group, and it is most likely that a large fraction of these thyroid cancers is attributable to radioiodine intake.” See “Chernobyl’s Legacy,” p. 7.

50 Frank von Hippel, “Contributions of Arms Control Physicists to the End of the Cold War,” Physics and Society, vol. 25, no. 2, April 1996, pp. 1, 9–10. The conference was part of the Niels Bohr Centennial celebration, Sept. 27–29, 1985.

51 Of three proposals considered, Cochran said NRDC’s was accepted because the group could move quickly. The agreement was signed May 28 between Velikhov and Adrian DeWind, chairman of the NRDC. Cochran, communication with author, July 9, 2008; von Hippel, Citizen Scientist, pp. 91–92.

52 Cochran had asked Charles Archambeau, a theoretical seismologist at the University of Colorado, to help organize the seismologists and equipment. Archambeau recruited John Berger, Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, to organize the team to man the Soviet and U.S. installations and identify and order the needed equipment. Archambeau and Berger recruited James N. Brune from the University of Nevada and several others.

53 Natural Resources Defense Council, “Nuclear Test Ban Verification Project,” Status Report, November 1986; and Thomas B. Cochran, The NRDC/Soviet Academy of Sciences Joint Nuclear Test Ban Verification Project, Physics and Global Security, vol. 16, no. 3, July 1987, pp. 5–8.

54 Cochran, communication with author, July 8, 2008. The Soviet documents are at Katayev, Hoover.

55 The Central Committee approval was July 9 as Cochran and his team were just arriving on the site. Katayev, Hoover.

56 Chernyaev, pp. 77–78.

57 Gorbachev letter to Reagan, Sept. 15, 1986, RRPL.

58 Reagan diary, Sept. 19, 1986.

59 Chernyaev notes from the Politburo session, Sept. 22, 1986. See The Reykjavik File: Previously Secret Documents from U.S. and Soviet Archives on the 1986 Reagan-Gorbachev Summit, TNSA EBB 203, doc. 3.

60 Chernyaev, pp. 79–84. Also see David Holloway, “The Soviet Preparation for Reykjavik: Four Documents,” in the conference report Implications of the Reykjavik Summit on Its Twentieth Anniversary (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2007), pp. 45–95.

61 Chernyaev, p. 81.

62 “Talking Points,” three pp., John Poindexter to the President, no date, RRPL, document no. 9155, Box 90907, European and Soviet Affairs Directorate, NSC.

63 Two sets of notes of the Reykjavik discussions were used for this account. While there are some differences, they largely agree on the substance of what was said. The United States notes are summaries and have been declassified by the State Department; see TNSA, EBB No. 203. The Soviet notes are more detailed, in the form of transcripted speech, and were published in four installments in 1993 by the journal