Old CIA Declassified Documents About the Cherbobyl Accident and Russia Testing EMPs Over Kazakhstan

Whilst looking around the internet I found a trove of old declassified CIA documents. Among these were one called 'Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Accident CIA, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Congressional, GAO, and Foreign Press Monitoring Files' that goes into some detail about the accident from the perspective of the authorities. There was originally 4010 pages and sadly this has been shaved down to a mere 224 pages in the released document. An excerpt of this document:

THE ACCIDENT

According to reports filed with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on April 25, 1986, technicians at the Chernobyl plant launched a poorly executed experiment to test the emergency electricity supply to one of its Soviet RBMK type design reactors. The test was meant to measure a turbogenerator's ability to provide in-house emergency power after shutting off its steam supply. During the experiment the technicians violated several rules in place for operating the reactor.

During the experiment, the emergency shutdown system was turned off. The reactor was being operated with too many control rods withdrawn. These human errors, coupled with a design flaw that allowed reactor power to surge when uncontrolled steam generation began in the core, set up the conditions for the accident.

A chain of events lasting 40 seconds occurred at 1:23 AM on April 26.

The technicians operating the reactor put the reactor in an unstable condition, so reactor power increased rapidly when the experiment began. Subsequent analysis of the Soviet data by U.S. experts at the Department of Energy, suggests the power surge may have accelerated when the operators tried an emergency shutdown of the reactor. According to Soviet data, the energy released was, for a fraction of a second, 350 times the rated capacity of the reactor. This burst of energy resulted in an instantaneous and violent surge of heat and pressure, rupturing fuel channels and releasing steam that disrupted large portions of the core.

The surge destroyed the core of reactor unit four, containing approximately 200 tons of nuclear fuel. Some of the shattered core material was propelled through the roof of the reactor building. The hot core material of reactor 4 started about 30 separate fires in the unit 4 reactor hall and turbine building, as well as on the roof of the adjoining unit 3. All but the main fire in the graphite moderator material still inside unit 4 were extinguished in a few hours.

The other documents the 1962 Soviet Nuclear EMP tests over Kazakhstan. Excerpt:

Almaty was the capital city of Kazakhstan until December 1997, when the capital was changed to Astana. Astana was known as Tselinograd and Aqmola at various times during the Soviet era (but Astana literally means capital). The region around the capital city, however, is still called the Aqmola region.

In early 2019, the name of the city of Astana was officially changed to Nur-Sultan. Many people still refer to it as Astana, and that name will be used on this page for now.

I will try to provide as much accurate information as possible about this series of high-altitude nuclear tests, although there is a considerable amount of information about the EMP effects of these particular tests that I would very much like to know more about. I will also try to be very careful about accuracy since some of the available information is inaccurate, even in respectable publications. and I don't want to add to the confusion. For example, one article that provides a lot of good information, that is mostly consistent with other sources, is "The 'K' Project: Soviet Nuclear Tests in Space" by Anatoly Zak in Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 13, No. 1, March 2006. However, that article has the altitudes of some of the 1962 tests wrong, as can be verified with both authoritative United States and Russian sources.

Download these here:
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Accident CIA, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Congressional, GAO, and Foreign Press Monitoring Files
The 1962 Soviet Nuclear EMP Tests over Kazakhstan

Archived from radmon.org - originally posted 19/12/2021