Trafika Europe 3 - Latvian Sojourn

So let them write, let them compile lists pedantically pointing out oversights, let them count off at length the failures to conform to labor standards and operating procedures, to the Energy Code, to the material and moral principles for acting in zones of elevated radioactive risk – oversights, mistakes and unimplemented security measures of primary importance. And in brief, including only the gravest errors, for example, the following: that the workers on the fifth shift shut down the emergency system, they stopped and started the machine however they felt like, doing the same with the automatic regulation system. And what's this talk of cooling turbines, given that for the purposes of this strange experiment all the back-up energy sources were cut off and even sealed off in advance – let's see what'll happen, those sharp minds said, let's just see. And what happened? The temperature rose highly strangely and strangely high, somehow quite perceptibly. The reactor, of course, was itself a Party member, it didn't want to explode and humiliate the great country, its scientists and academics, who shouted all the livelong day that the Soviet atom was the safest atom on the planet – the reactor resisted, wringing its hands, trying desperately to keep itself together. But here the masters of that deadly sport had already put it in a headlock that no one could escape from – not even Reactor Four of the world's third-largest atomic

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