Valery Alekseyevich Legasov (Russian: Валерий Алексеевич Легасов; 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 committed suicide in 1988.
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.
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.
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.
I was interested in comparing the real dangers, the real threats that nuclear energy carries to the threats of other energy systems. This is what I was passionately working on, mainly figuring out the dangers in sources of energy alternative to nuclear energy.
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.
[Our nuclear systems] were painfully lacking in good control systems and extremely poor in diagnostic systems... I have not seen a single group in the Soviet Union that raised and considered [the analysis of nuclear safety] with any degree of competence... As for the RBMK reactor, you know, in reactor circles, it was considered a bad reactor. Viktor Alekseyevich Sidorenko had repeatedly criticised it. But this reactor was not considered bad because of safety reasons. From a safety point of view, it even stood out as being better, as I understood from the discussions. It was considered bad because of economic reasons... When I looked at this device, I was confused by, for example, an unusual and, in my opinion, insufficient construction of safety systems, that would work in extreme situations. [I began] to speak about the necessity of the next generation of reactors to be safer; say TTER reactors or liquid salt reactors that I was trying to present as the next steps towards safer reactors. But this caused a storm in the Ministry. A storm of indignation.
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.
...the information I had convinced me that not everything was well in the development of nuclear energy, as it seemed to me... Science organizations began to weaken, not strengthen. Slowly, once the most powerful in the country, they began to lose the standard of modern equipment. The staff began to age. Fewer young people joined. New approaches were not welcomed. Gradually, imperceptibly, but it was happening... I witnessed all this, but it was hard for me to intervene in the process purely professionally while general declarations on this subject were received with hostility. Because an attempt by a non-professional to bring some kind of insight into their work could hardly be acceptable... the scientific spirit and the scientific atmosphere in reactor engineering gradually began to submit to the engineering will, as it were, to the ministerial will... All conceptual talks, all attempts at adopting a scientific, consistent approach towards this problem, they did not accept at all.