Valery Alekseyevich Legasov (; 1 September 1936 – 27 April 1988) was a Soviet inorganic chemist, professor at Moscow State University, first deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, and a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union.
He is best known for his efforts to contain the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. In August 1986, Legasov presented the findings of an investigation to the International Atomic Energy Agency at the United Nations Office at Vienna, detailing the actions and circumstances that led to the explosion in Chernobyl but neglecting to mention some of the RBMK reactor's design flaws.
Suffering from poor health because of radiation exposure, and frustrated that his attempts at reforming Soviet academic chemistry were rebuffed, he died by suicide in 1988.
Early life Valery Alekseyevich Legasov was born on 1 September 1936 in Tula, Russian SFSR, into a family of civil workers. He attended secondary school in Kursk. In 1949–1954, he attended School No. 56 in Moscow and graduated with a gold medal. While he was a shy student, he excelled in both academic work and social activities being elected secretary of his school's Komsomol committee. During 1953, he proposed several reforms to the Komsomol committee to address what he perceived as indifference and passivity of its members. These ideas were quickly quashed by the authorities. His headmaster observed that Legasov "is a grown up man, a future statesman, a talented organizer. He can be a philosopher, а historian, an engineer..." The school now bears his name, and his bronze bust stands at the entrance. For two years he worked as a released secretary of the Central Committee of the Komsomol, he was elected to the bureau of the Soviet District Committee of the Komsomol 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.
Personal life Legasov married Margarita Mikhailovna and had two children. In his personal life, he composed poetry and encouraged its publication. He often visited the theater with his wife and loved reading Russian and foreign literature, particularly the works of Yuri Bondarev. Legasov was not religious but very interested in religious history and heritage.
Career For around two years, Legasov worked as an engineer at the Siberian Chemical Combine in the city of Tomsk-7, as a shift supervisor. He took this role in order to gain practical experience that would be the basis for later research. At Tomsk Polytechnic University, he started researching gaseous uranium hexachloride in a gaseous fission reactor. However, news of progress made by Neil Bartlett in Canada caused Legasov to switch his interest to noble gas chemistry. In 1962, he joined the graduate school in the Department of Molecular Physics of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, first as a junior then senior researcher, and finally as head of the laboratory. In 1967, he defended his thesis at the Kurchatov Institute, under the supervisor Isaak Kikoin, on the synthesis of compounds of noble gases and the study of their properties. He received the degree of Candidate in 1967 and his doctorate in chemistry in 1972. At some stage, Legasov experienced facial injuries and minor scarring as a result of chemical experimentation.
In 1976, Legasov was elected as a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. 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 of Sciences of the USSR, in the Department of Physical Chemistry and Technology of Inorganic Materials. He was a member of the Science and Technology Council of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building. From 1983 until his death, he worked as chair of the department of Radiochemistry and Chemical Technology at the Faculty of Chemistry at Moscow State University. In 1983, he became the first deputy director for scientific work of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy. His colleague Yu. A. Ustynyuk said of Legasov: "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."
Legasov researched hydrogen energy as a byproduct of nuclear energy, nuclear energy strategy, energy generation safety and synthesis of unusual compounds, which he regarded as a neglected niche within the institute's activities. Under his leadership, a scientific school was created for the newest subfield of inorganic chemistry – chemistry of noble gases. Working on reactor design was taboo for a chemist in the institute but he focused instead on related technologies, as well as assisted with the management of the institute.
Along with colleagues like Viktor Alekseyevich Sidorenko, Legasov became concerned about the quality of equipment, poor construction, the lack of training of operators and the lack of training simulators.
From 1984 to 1985, Legasov with other specialists had reviewed the state of chemistry research in the country and found it to be in a critical state. Under his leadership, a series of drastic reforms of the organization and funding of scientific institutions were drafted. The proposals triggered a significant backlash from the existing scientific leadership. While Legasov attempted to include all the top scientists in the new organization, many objected to Legasov being given a top leadership position, considering him an upstart. Malicious rumors began to be circulated such as the accusation of being an alcoholic, over-ambitious or to blame for the Chernobyl disaster.
In the public sphere, he still kept to the official position that nuclear power was safe. In January 1986, Legasov co-authored a propaganda piece in Soviet Life magazine claiming there had been no nuclear accidents that had seriously threatened personnel or risked contamination, which ignored multiple serious nuclear incidents in the Soviet Union. Even before the Chernobyl disaster, Legasov was known to stress the need for new security and safety methods to prevent large catastrophes. He had been involved in work on industrial safety with the State Committee for Science and Technology, in which he had explored the risks involved in energy generation. Legasov was particularly concerned with complex systems reliant on a single operator without adequate safety systems. Legasov had the opportunity to visit nuclear power plants in the West, such as the Soviet designed Loviisa Nuclear Power Plant in Finland, and was shocked at the higher safety standards, better equipment, a containment structure and superior construction.
Chernobyl disaster
Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded on 26 April 1986 at 1:23:45 a.m., releasing a massive amount of radiation and contaminating a large area. By that time, Legasov was the first deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy. Although not a reactor specialist, he became a key member of the government commission formed to investigate the causes of the disaster and to plan the mitigation of its consequences. Legasov was told he was assigned to a government commission that was looking into the accident.
At Vnukovo airport, Legasov met Boris Shcherbina, the head of the government commission dealing with the accident response. When the team reached Pripyat, Legasov was put in charge of containing the radiation. Viktor Alekseyevich Sidorenko called for immediate evacuation of Pripyat, which Legasov supported, as the situation was expected to deteriorate in the town, and this decision was approved by Shcherbina. To make direct measurements of the reactor, Legasov was driven in an armored personnel carrier to the site which established the reactor had shut down. Despite lacking information about the state of the reactor, Legasov proposed and managed the effort to extinguish the reactor fire which would otherwise release a massive amount of radiation, although the team was in continual discussions with other scientists by telephone. One Kurchatov scientist warned him that the helicopter drops might not be effective but Legasov replied that they had to be seen to do something. Legasov admired the leadership of Shcherbina, particularly his ability to grasp what the specialists were telling him and his decision making. Nikolay Antoshkin, an air force general involved in the liquidation, remembers: I met Valery Alekseyevich as soon as he arrived. From that moment on, a working friendship, which then grew into a deeper friendship, was formed with him and with other comrades. I liked him from the very beginning. I was filled with trust and respect for him. ... Valery Alekseyevich himself flew over the reactor by helicopter 5–6 times a day. Scientists, smart, literate, and when it was necessary to go forward, they found themselves without means of protection. ... He was a man of courage, understanding everything, but at the same time defenseless. At one point, Antoshkin scolded Legasov for taking too many personal risks when he was key to the operation. On the second or third day, Legasov suggested organizing an information group to collect and disseminate accurate information to the press, but this did not occur, and he later observed that the press often interviewed the most famous person present rather than the most knowledgeable, introducing many inaccuracies and omissions in reporting. Legasov received many telegrams from around the world containing advice ranging from benevolent to provocative.
On 2 May, he and other commission members reported to visiting high-ranking officials that this was no ordinary industrial accident but would require a significant containment effort, as well as a review of the future of the other reactors. This resulted in huge resources being allocated to Chernobyl. Most of the first government commission were replaced by new staff due to radiation exposure. When the first government commission group returned to Moscow, Legasov was asked to stay by Shcherbina but was replaced by his scientific rival Evgeny Velikhov in the formal hierarchy. The team began to be concerned with small areas of reactor activity, as well as the integrity of the concrete pad. Velikhov in particular was concerned that the reactor remains could melt deep into the ground, as shown in the US film The China Syndrome. Water in the lower barboteur was drained but Legasov was convinced that an explosion was not possible, in contrast to what some scientists and politicians feared. He also considered the possibility of ground water contamination to be extremely low, but precautionary work was initiated to cool the reactor using an underground system. Legasov considered these containment steps to be excessive but understandable, while also providing the infrastructure for the eventual construction of a shelter sarcophagus over the reactor. He opposed a plan to extend the underground cooling system outside the reactor 4 building, as well as other projects he considered to be redundant. Legasov was impressed by the operation of the KGB in the area but considered the Civil Defence group to be in shambles. He was also concerned at the lack of safety literature distributed to the population. Legasov thought people worked together efficiently and this put them in good spirits.