The physicist who built the dosimetry for F-1's first criticality and founded the Soviet reactor radiation safety system
In 1944, demobilized after his third serious wound, Dubovsky appeared before Kurchatov on crutches. Kurchatov asked, "How will you work in that condition?" A month later Dubovsky returned without the crutches, using only a cane, and was hired at Laboratory No. 2.
A Soviet nuclear physicist from Kharkov University. Demobilized after being wounded at the front, he joined Kurchatov's Laboratory No. 2 in 1944, where he carried out radiation dosimetry measurements and gamma-ray shielding experiments during the assembly of the F-1 reactor, built neutron counters from scratch, and performed the plutonium accumulation calculations. He was one of the handful who remained in the control room when F-1 went critical on 25 December 1946; he went on to found the Soviet reactor radiation safety system and directed the physical startups of the Obninsk nuclear power plant (1954) and the Mayak plutonium production reactors.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1940Graduated Kharkov University, Faculty of Physics and Mathematics; worked at Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology
- 1941–1943Front-line service, infantry battalion commander; demobilized after three wounds
- 1944–1946Laboratory No. 2, F-1 reactor: dosimetry, gamma shielding, neutron counters, plutonium accumulation calculations
- 1947–1952Head of radiation safety group; physical startups of Mayak (Combine 817) plutonium production reactors
- 1954Co-directed physical startup of Obninsk NPP (world's first), with A.K. Krasin
- 1958–1977Head of Nuclear Safety Laboratory, IPPE, Obninsk
- 1977–1986Ministry of Medium Machine Building; retired after publicly criticizing Chernobyl design flaws
- 1990년대Expert, State Duma Ecology Committee; contributed to radioactive waste safety legislation
Related historical events
- 1943–1949The Soviet Atomic ProjectLead radiation monitor at F-1's first criticalityHe performed plutonium accumulation calculations for the F-1 reactor, built neutron counters from scratch, and was one of the few who remained in the reactor room during the first criticality to monitor radiation.
- 1986The Chernobyl DisasterCritic of the accident's causes and blameHe publicly challenged the official account of the Chernobyl accident and its attribution of blame to plant staff.
After Chernobyl: on design responsibility and the price of dissent
Having been responsible for radiation safety since his Laboratory No. 2 years, Dubovsky read the 1986 Chernobyl accident not as an accident but as the outcome of design faults that had been allowed to stand. He called the 1975 Leningrad plant accident and the 1982 Chernobyl accident rehearsals for 1986, and he held that RBMK designer N. A. Dollezhal had failed to change the reactor's core design despite the repeated accidents. His 1989 Obninsk publication, On the factors of nuclear reactor instability using the RBMK reactor as an example, addressed the problem directly.
He also opposed the official attribution of blame and the criminal prosecution of the operating staff. He argued publicly that convicting staff who were dismissed over the accident was unlawful and unfounded, and he rejected the guilty verdict against the five Chernobyl plant workers, holding that personnel violations, given even minimal adequacy of the reactor's protection, would have amounted only to a week of downtime. The real causes, in his account, were the absence of adequate emergency protection, poor documentation and management of the plant by non-specialists, and he spoke from his experience heading the nuclear safety laboratory in the Ministry of Medium Machine Building system.
In the same vein he wrote to M. S. Gorbachev, arguing that continuing to shift responsibility onto the Chernobyl operating staff ruled out any further development of the power industry, and asking for the chance to explain the true causes of the accident and the necessary safety measures to the Supreme Soviet's ecology deputies. His criticism also touched the responsibility of Obninsk science itself, and after his statements encountered strong opposition he was forced to retire, having left his post in the mid-1980s.