Valery Legasov

• 1. Introduction

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  In August 1986, Valery Legasov stood before the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna and spoke for five hours. The report he carried for the Soviet delegation ran to 388 pages. Legasov was a Soviet inorganic chemist, not a reactor designer, yet he had become one of the central figures in the response to the Chernobyl disaster. Afterward he offered his own verdict on that performance: "I did not lie in Vienna... but I did not tell the full truth." What was he sent to Vienna to explain, and what was he not allowed to say? Why was a chemist who studied noble gases put in charge of containing radiation? And why did a scientist praised abroad as one of the world's leading minds die by his own hand less than two years later?

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• 2. A Gold Medal Reformer

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  Tula is where Valery Alekseyevich Legasov was born, on the 1st of September 1936, into a family of civil workers. He attended secondary school in Kursk, then moved to School No. 56 in Moscow, where he studied from 1949-1954 and graduated with a gold medal.

  A shy student, he nevertheless threw himself into school life and was elected secretary of his school's Komsomol committee. In 1953 he proposed several reforms to counter what he saw as the indifference and passivity of its members. The authorities quickly quashed his ideas. His headmaster wrote that Legasov "is a grown up man, a future statesman, a talented organizer. He can be a philosopher, a historian, an engineer..." The school now bears his name, and a bronze bust of him stands at its entrance.

  For two years after school he held a full-time post as a secretary of the Komsomol's Central Committee. He was also elected to the bureau of a Soviet District Committee and to the Moscow City Committee of the Komsomol. In 1961 he graduated from the Faculty of Physicochemical Engineering at the Mendeleev Moscow Institute of Chemistry and Technology, where he learned how nuclear fuel is processed, handled and disposed of. That training took him next to a shift supervisor's job in the city of Tomsk-7.

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• 3. Noble Gases and Honors

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  Tomsk-7, home of the Siberian Chemical Combine, was where Legasov spent around two years as an engineer and shift supervisor. He took the post deliberately, to gain practical experience that would underpin his later research. At Tomsk Polytechnic University he began studying gaseous uranium hexachloride inside a gaseous fission reactor. Then news arrived of progress by Neil Bartlett in Canada, and Legasov turned his attention to the chemistry of noble gases.

  In 1962 he entered the graduate school of the Department of Molecular Physics at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy. He rose from junior to senior researcher and finally to head of a laboratory. In 1967 he defended his thesis under Isaak Kikoin, on synthesizing noble gas compounds and studying their properties. That year brought him the degree of Candidate, and a doctorate in chemistry followed in 1972. At some point, chemical experiments left him with facial injuries and minor scarring.

  The honors came steadily. In 1976 he was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, and from 1978 to 1983 he was a professor at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. In 1981 he became a full member of the Academy, in the Department of Physical Chemistry and Technology of Inorganic Materials. Under his leadership a scientific school grew up around noble gas chemistry, a subfield he regarded as a neglected niche within the institute's work.

  Margarita Mikhailovna was his wife, and the couple had two children. Legasov composed poetry and encouraged its publication. He often went to the theater with his wife and loved Russian and foreign literature, especially the works of Yuri Bondarev. He was not religious, but he took a keen interest in religious history and heritage.

  A colleague, Yu. A. Ustynyuk, offered this portrait: "His main quality, which set him sharply apart from all the great organizing scientists I knew, was his exceptional dedication to the cause. Work was the main, almost the only meaning of his life."

  From 1983 until his death, Legasov chaired the department of Radiochemistry and Chemical Technology at the Faculty of Chemistry at Moscow State University. That same year he became first deputy director for scientific work at the Kurchatov Institute. It was the post he held when Chernobyl exploded in 1986.

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• 4. Warnings Before Chernobyl

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  Hydrogen energy as a byproduct of nuclear power was one of the topics Legasov studied, alongside nuclear energy strategy and the safety of energy generation. Reactor design was taboo for a chemist at the institute. He worked instead on related technologies and helped manage the institute. He later described his passion this way: "I was interested in comparing the real dangers, the real threats that nuclear energy carries to the threats of other energy systems."

  Viktor Alekseyevich Sidorenko was among the colleagues who shared his worries. Together they grew concerned about the quality of equipment, poor construction, the weak training of operators and the absence of training simulators. Legasov had also worked on industrial safety with the State Committee for Science and Technology. There he worried most about complex systems that depended on a single operator without adequate safety backups.

  The Loviisa Nuclear Power Plant in Finland gave him a startling comparison. It was Soviet designed, yet Legasov was shocked by its higher safety standards, better equipment, containment structure and superior construction.

  He heard the RBMK reactor discussed in reactor circles as a bad machine. Legasov recalled that the objection was economic, not about safety. If anything, he understood, it stood out as safer. Still, he found its safety systems unusual and insufficient for extreme situations. When he urged that the next generation of reactors be safer, naming TTER and liquid salt designs, the idea provoked "a storm of indignation" in the Ministry.

  In public, he held to the official line that nuclear power was safe. In January 1986 he co-authored a piece in Soviet Life magazine claiming there had been no nuclear accidents that seriously threatened personnel or risked contamination. That claim ignored several serious incidents in the Soviet Union. A few months later, Reactor 4 exploded.

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• 5. Into the Zone

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  At 1:23:45 a.m. on the 26th of April 1986, Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded, releasing a massive amount of radiation over a large area. Legasov was not a reactor specialist, yet he became a key member of the government commission formed to investigate the causes and plan the response.

  At Vnukovo airport he met Boris Shcherbina, who headed the commission. Once the team reached Pripyat, Legasov was put in charge of containing the radiation. Sidorenko called for the immediate evacuation of Pripyat. Legasov backed him, and Shcherbina approved. To take direct measurements, Legasov was driven to the site in an armored personnel carrier, which established that the reactor had shut down.

  The reactor fire was the next problem. Despite scant information about the reactor's state, Legasov proposed and managed the effort to put it out with helicopter drops, while consulting other scientists by telephone. One Kurchatov scientist warned him the drops might not work. Legasov answered that they had to be seen to be doing something.

  Nikolay Antoshkin, an air force general involved in the clean-up, remembered that Legasov flew over the reactor by helicopter five or six times a day. He called him "a man of courage, understanding everything, but at the same time defenseless." Antoshkin once scolded him for taking too many personal risks when the operation depended on him.

  On the second or third day, Legasov suggested an information group to collect and distribute accurate facts to the press. It was never organized. He later observed that reporters tended to interview the most famous person present rather than the most knowledgeable, which produced many inaccuracies. Telegrams also poured in from around the world, ranging from benevolent to provocative.

  On the 2nd of May, Legasov and other commission members told visiting senior officials that this was no ordinary industrial accident. It would demand a major containment effort and a review of the future of the other reactors. Huge resources followed. Most of the first commission was replaced because of radiation exposure. Shcherbina asked Legasov to stay, but his scientific rival Evgeny Velikhov took his place in the formal hierarchy.

  Velikhov feared the reactor remains could melt deep into the ground, as in the American film The China Syndrome. Legasov was convinced an explosion was impossible and rated groundwater contamination extremely unlikely. Even so, precautionary work began on an underground cooling system. Legasov judged it excessive but understandable, and it laid groundwork for the later shelter over the reactor. He opposed extending the system outside the Reactor 4 building. He was impressed by the KGB's operation in the area, thought the Civil Defence group was in shambles, and worried that so little safety literature reached the population.

  On the 5th of May, Legasov was summoned to the Politburo in Moscow, where Mikhail Gorbachev sat. He and Anatoly Alexandrov described the meltdown scenarios, and Legasov endorsed the plan to tunnel beneath the reactor for cooling. Shcherbina told him afterward he could work from Moscow, but he was soon ordered back. His own idea was to pump nitrogen gas through the plant's pipe network to smother the fire, but the pipes were too damaged. Around the 9th or the 10th of May, Gorbachev asked for a chronology of events and the cause of the accident. Legasov supplied it in writing, with a few edits from other investigators.

  After the 10th of May the situation had steadied, and he could spend less time at the site, though he still visited often. When he returned from his second trip on the 12th of May, he was a changed man, suffering from severe grief and radiation sickness. He had spent four months in and around Chernobyl and absorbed a high dose. Next came an assignment to compile a report for the International Atomic Energy Agency. Some in the Ministry of Medium Machine Building, known as Sredmash, opposed his appointment, fearing he would be hard to control.

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• 6. The Politburo and Vienna

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  The 3rd of July 1986 brought a turbulent Politburo meeting, with Legasov in the room. Also present were the former plant director Viktor Bryukhanov, the RBMK designer Alexandrov and Efim Slavsky of Sredmash. Bryukhanov was accused of mismanagement and cast as the main source of operator error, though design flaws were acknowledged as a factor. Gorbachev was furious and accused the designers of hiding dangerous problems in the Soviet nuclear industry for decades. Legasov spoke only to admit that scientists had failed in their duty and that he had warned about the RBMK's safety problems for years without result.

  His first draft landed at the Central Committee and shocked some readers. One minister forwarded it to the KGB with a recommendation that its authors be prosecuted. Finding fault with the reactor design would directly implicate senior figures in the Soviet government.

  The version Legasov delivered in Vienna was therefore a trimmed one. It was noted for its detail and relative openness about the scale and consequences of the tragedy. It exposed to Western media some flaws in the RBMK design, including the positive void coefficient, along with problems in operator training. He also stated that the operators had been able to disable the reactor's safety systems, and that improvements to existing RBMK reactors were underway.

  The Central Committee had censored other material. The full extent of the design flaws was cut, as were the institutional and cultural problems behind the accident and the full extent of the fallout. So was the failed attempt to drop liquid nitrogen into the reactor. For the Soviets the conference was a public relations triumph, reassuring Western governments and scientists that the disaster was contained and that Moscow could manage nuclear power competently.

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• 7. Fame and Isolation

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  From 1984 to 1985, Legasov and other specialists had surveyed the state of chemistry research in the country and judged it critical. Under his leadership, drastic reforms to the organization and funding of scientific institutions were drafted. Established leaders pushed back hard. Many objected to giving him a top position, considering him an upstart, and malicious rumors spread that he was an alcoholic, over-ambitious or to blame for Chernobyl.

  Vienna made things worse. One account says that he "became very popular, in Europe he was named the person of the year, he entered the top ten scientists in the world. This caused serious jealousy among his colleagues." In public he supported the official story that operator error caused the accident. In private he campaigned for reactor safety and institutional reorganization. He was ostracized by some fellow scientists. The old guard resisted change, while younger reformers saw him as a relic of the Era of Stagnation. One senior scientist wrote that Legasov "was a clear representative of that scientific mafia whose political leanings instead of scientific leadership led to the Chernobyl accident."

  In spring 1987, the Kurchatov Institute voted on a seat on its Scientific-Technical Council, with Legasov standing at the insistence of his mentor Anatoly Alexandrov. The members turned him down, which was surprising given his seniority and public visibility. He was also the only member of his Chernobyl team who did not receive the award Hero of Socialist Labor. His independence, his habit of skipping the chain of command and his lack of deference to the scientific establishment may have counted against him. Even so, he remained a proponent of nuclear power.

  His health had worsened, and he made frequent visits to Moscow Hospital 6 for the lasting effects of radiation exposure. Around June 1987 he attempted suicide but was saved by colleagues. He recorded his memoir, The Legasov Testament, on audio tapes, describing his part in the Chernobyl liquidation. On those tapes he called the disaster "an apotheosis, the pinnacle of all the mismanagement that has been carried out for decades in our country." He listed three design mistakes. The first was the absence of at least two independent emergency protection systems. The third was that every protection system could be reached by station staff. He also asked to say plainly that "we do not have safe nuclear energy."

  A long hospital stay in the fall of 1987 included acute appendicitis, and during it he attempted suicide again. There the journalist Ales Adamovich interviewed him, and Legasov voiced fear that a similar accident could still happen. On the 5th of October 1987, Pravda published his article on industrial safety, titled "From Today to Tomorrow," but it attracted little interest. In interviews with Novy Mir and Yunost he changed his public stance, saying that cultural failings and a Soviet science that had lost its way made disaster inevitable. To a colleague who urged him to hold on, he said: "I'm now like the mythical Midas, only he turned everything he took into gold, and as for me, everything turns into air, even worse, into a vacuum."

  His last reform effort was an interdepartmental council meant to break the stagnation in academic chemistry. It was rejected on the 26th of April 1988. Ustynyuk found him in his office "extremely agitated and low-spirited," and heard him say: "This will lead to disaster. I must resign." That afternoon Legasov briefly visited his daughter. At 22:30 Ustynyuk phoned him, arguing that he might still prevail with support from top scientists who had not been consulted.

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• 8. Death and Legacy

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  On the 27th of April 1988, the day after the second anniversary of the Chernobyl accident, Valery Legasov took his own life in Moscow. He was 51. The next day he was due to release the outcomes of the investigation into the disaster. Sources disagree on the place, giving the stairwell of his apartment, the apartment itself or his office. He was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery. By then he had absorbed 150 rem (1.5 Sv) of radiation, far above safe levels.

  Several explanations have been offered. David R. Marples suggested that the anniversary weighed on his state of mind, and that he was bitterly disillusioned by the authorities' refusal to face the design flaws. His daughter said: "It was not an emotional breakdown, it was a deliberate, thoroughly considered act." Ustynyuk stressed the harassment he suffered from scientific leaders opposed to reform. Shcherbina remembered him this way: "Valery was too great, I loved him more than all the people I knew, he gave all of himself to work, to Chernobyl. He burnt out." The journalists Vladimir Gubarev and Yuriy Shcherbak claim his suicide was a conscious attempt to draw attention to the lack of nuclear safety in the Soviet Union.

  In May 1988, Pravda printed extracts from his tapes. At his death he was regarded as a national hero, and his suicide rocked the Soviet nuclear industry. Yet many in the scientific community were still displeased with him. A former colleague said he took on too much, even dictating topics to physics laboratories, and added that "the shelter of the fourth unit turned out to be far from optimal." His defenders replied: "His courage was not forgiven, because it clearly indicated the cowardice and ordinariness of others."

  Later findings by the IAEA shifted the verdict. They found the reactor design, and how operators were told about safety, mattered more than the first Soviet investigation admitted. They also found that operators had deviated from procedure, changed test protocols on the fly and made "ill judged" decisions, so human error remained a major factor.

  On the 20th of September 1996, Russian president Boris Yeltsin posthumously gave Legasov the title Hero of the Russian Federation for the "courage and heroism" he showed investigating the disaster. His wife Margarita wrote many articles and books to preserve his legacy. Ade Edmondson played him in the BBC docudrama Surviving Disaster in 2006, and Jared Harris played him in the Sky and HBO miniseries Chernobyl in 2019. Adam Curtis also covered him in the 1992 series Pandora's Box. In 2016, a bust and a commemorative plaque were fixed to the wall of his home in Tula, the city where he was born.

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