To eliminate the consequences of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, a special dump truck was made

Soon after the cataclysm, when preliminary information about the destruction at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was received, it became clear that there, in the most dangerous zone of the strongest radioactive contamination, large-scale work was to be done. It is necessary to take out to the disposal points a huge amount of debris formed during the explosion, to deliver the building materials necessary to build protective structures around the emergency power unit No. 4. This requires special equipment that provides protection from harmful radiation to people working on it. Including “anti-radiation” dump trucks are very necessary. Those handicraft devices that supplied serial trucks in the first days after the accident, sending them to the fourth block, gave only an extremely low level of isolation from the “rebellious atom”.

Yevgeny Efimov, an expert on the history of the domestic automotive industry, told MK about what a miracle of automotive technology was created in the Soviet Union back in 1986.

– On June 22, 1986, the leadership of the Kremenchug Automobile Plant received an important government task. In the shortest possible time, it was necessary to develop and manufacture a dump truck in a small series that could work normally in a zone of high radiation contamination, and at the same time the health of the driver would not be endangered.

The task is not an easy one; the Kremenchug car factories have never done anything like this before. By order of the director, a working group was created from the most experienced, knowledgeable design engineers.

In order not to start at all from a “white sheet”, we decided to take as a basis one of the serial vehicles already produced at that time – the KrAZ-256B1. These three-axle dump trucks with a carrying capacity of 12 tons with two driving rear axles have shown themselves well at many large construction sites in the country, they worked on laying the BAM route, worked in quarries, provided the most difficult operations for blocking rivers and building huge dams for future hydroelectric power stations … By the way ” two hundred and fifty-six” is probably well known to many readers of “MK” from the film “Mimino”, – it was such an orange dump truck that was driven by one of the main characters, whose role was played by Frunzik Mkrtchyan.

It would seem that the alterations to turn a serial dump truck into an “anti-nuclear” one should not be so great. It is only necessary to make a new driver’s cabin that does not let radiation into itself. However, as always happens in such cases, as the project became more detailed, a chain of problems arose that required additional design changes.

At that time, lead was practically the only suitable barrier against radiation for this case. The factory workers decided to make a special lead cabin-capsule for the driver of the “Chernobyl” KrAZ. Welded a two-layer frame of steel plates, and poured molten lead into the gap between the layers. At the same time, the thickness of such a “filling” was made unequal. From the bottom, where the “fond” from the contaminated soil and the debris lying on it should be the strongest, the floor was covered with a 3-centimeter layer, the screen was made thinner on the sides of the cabin – 2.5 centimeters, and the least vulnerable area on the roof was protected by 12- millimeter “shell”. It took a lot of lead, but the material is scarce. I had to “scrape” from all the enterprises of the city. And later, an extraordinary delivery of 60 tons of such metal was made for the entire batch of “anti-nuclear” dump trucks from Kazakhstan.

Instead of ordinary glass in the capsule cabin, they used special double-glazed windows borrowed from the military to protect against the penetration of radiation. Their thickness was 75 mm, and the size is very small – only 30×30 centimeters. Such a “window” was equipped with a lead frame made for it and inserted into the cockpit as a windshield. In order to provide for the possibility of prompt cleaning from flying dirt and raindrops, ordinary glass from the Kraz cabin was attached on top of the special package, providing it with a windshield wiper.

At first, the plant managed to obtain only a small number of anti-radiation protective double-glazed windows (due to their specific material, they had a characteristic yellowish color). Therefore, the creators of the “Chernobyl” KrAZ had to, reluctantly, abandon the side windows in the cab of the first “anti-nuclear” trucks. So that the driver could still have sufficient visibility, 4 panoramic mirrors were installed on the dump truck – two on the sides of the hood, and two more – on remote brackets mounted on the edges of the front bumper.

The resulting design of the capsule cabin looked very cumbersome. At first, the factory workers wanted to “put on” an ordinary Kraz cabin on her. This would make it possible to give the special car the appearance of a serial dump truck. The Kremlin insisted on such a disguise: after all, reports are regularly broadcast from the Chernobyl liquidation zone, which are also broadcast on foreign television. So let the audience see on the screen the most ordinary trucks working in the area of ​​the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and not some kind of “monsters”. This will be an additional confirmation of the reassuring information that comes from the Soviet leadership: they say that nothing particularly terrible happened there, on the banks of the Pripyat.

But no matter how hard the KrAZ engineers tried to fulfill the wishes of Moscow, nothing happened: it was not possible to “put on” a fake serial cabin on the capsule. After all, in addition to the protective structure itself, it was required to place an additional bulky FVUA-100N filter-ventilation unit next to it, which should ensure the purification of the air entering the capsule from radiation.

The KrAZ management warned the comrades from the Central Committee: either we would have to spend quite a lot of time on the complex rearrangement of the units of the “Chernobyl” dump truck in order to drive them into the dimensions of a standard cab, and then the release of a batch of such vehicles would be delayed, or we would have to refuse.

From Moscow they gave the go-ahead for the second option: the special KrAZ trucks were required by the liquidators as soon as possible.

As a result, the “anti-nuclear” dump truck had a very characteristic type of cabin-half, shifted to the left side. Getting into it was not the easiest thing for the driver: a tiny door, located on the right, led inside.

Due to the large amount of lead, the protective capsule turned out to be very heavy – its weight reached 3 tons. In addition, this load was unevenly distributed: the bulk of the weight fell on the left front of the machine. To remedy the situation, it was necessary to strengthen the left frame spar, the left front spring with additional elements … In addition, the most loaded front left wheel needed to be pumped up harder: instead of the 6.5 kg / cm2 prescribed for serial dump trucks, they gave 7.5 kg / cm2, and in order for such pressure which good did not disassemble the wheel, provided for special safety straps and clamps. In addition, measures were taken to facilitate the management of such a truck weighted on one side: the power steering pump was adjusted to give a higher pressure.

There were several other features in the design of the “Chernobyl” KrAZ that distinguished it from the serial “two hundred and fifty-sixth”. For example, for the sake of saving weight and simplifying, they did not install a cabin heating system. The factory workers reasoned as follows: since the main work on eliminating the consequences of the accident is going to be completed before winter, then the drivers of special dump trucks will not have to experience the influence of the cold.

Given the presence of the above-mentioned filter and ventilation unit, which had to work constantly in any situation, it was powered by four batteries installed (one battery was used in the basic model of the dump truck).

In addition, the designers came up with insurance against the “human factor”. To exclude the possibility of accidentally turning off the engine by the driver, the handle for manually controlling the fuel supply and stopping the engine was taken out of the cab. Now the only way to turn off the engine was to open the capsule door and lean out. Naturally, in the real conditions of the “fading” Chernobyl, no one would have dared to do so. Therefore, the “engine” of the special KrAZ “threshed” non-stop throughout the entire work shift. Well, if, nevertheless, he stalled while in the radiation-hazardous zone, then, according to the instructions developed, the driver had to remain inside the capsule and wait for help to arrive in time.

The pilot copy of the “anti-nuclear” dump truck, which was assigned the designation KrAZ-256B1-030, was ready on July 10, 1986. First, it was tested on the go in the vicinity of the plant. It turned out that such a “monster” is quite convenient to drive, and besides, the car overcomes off-road sections well.

At the next stage, KrAZ was tested for radiation safety. The dump truck was sent to the city of Zhovtiye Vody, to the Vostochny mining and processing plant located there, where uranium ore was mined and processed. This enterprise had all the necessary radiometric equipment to control the level of radiation. The weakly protected places in the cockpit identified during the tests were promptly covered with additional lead linings.

Soon the first of the “Chernobyl” KrAZ trucks was sent to the accident zone. Following him, the plant assembled seven more of the same dump trucks. And by July 27, the rest of the copies from the ordered batch were ready.

In total, 18 “anti-nuclear” KrAZ-256B1-030 dump trucks worked to eliminate the accident in Chernobyl. These unique machines withstood their share of the test. But not one of them – and this is quite understandable – has never been placed in a museum. After completing all the main work on clearing the explosion zone at power unit No. 4 and erecting a protective sarcophagus over it, these special KrAZ trucks, along with hundreds of other vehicles that participated in the liquidation work, were sent to a burial ground for the burial of contaminated equipment.