On every birthday for thirty-five years, Clifford Robinson thinks back to that day in April 1986. Now 64, he teaches mathematics and physics at a high school in Uppsala, north of Stockholm. It has been years since he set foot in a nuclear power plant, and he is not complaining. For him, uranium is not a solution to facilitate the energy transition, whatever part of the Swedish right may say, which regrets the closure of half of the twelve reactors in the country since 1999 and would like to open new ones. .
“By doing calculations, based on the direction of the wind, it became evident that it was coming from outside. Everything pointed to an accident that would have occurred a few days earlier in Ukraine or Belarus. “ Gunnar Bengtsson, former boss of the Swedish Institute for Radiation Protection
In his high school, the students know he is a celebrity. On April 28, 1986, Clifford Robinson was the first to discover the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine (then part of the USSR). “Quite by chance”, he hastens to clarify. He was then a chemist at the Forsmark plant on the east coast of Sweden, about 150 kilometers from Stockholm, and over 1,100 kilometers from the Ukrainian plant.
Arriving at work that morning, he had breakfast, then went to brush his teeth, in a bathroom adjoining the secure area of the power plant. On leaving, he had to pass a security check: “The machine, which was there to check that the employees were not contaminated before leaving, then began to ring, which made no sense, since I was coming from outside. ”
It’s misunderstanding
He first thinks that the equipment is faulty and goes to his laboratory to analyze the filters he has taken from the chimneys: everything is normal. “But a little later in the morning, when I went out for coffee, there was a long line in front of security. It sounded with each passage. It was incomprehensible. “
The chemist sees only one explanation: a radioactivity leak, gone unnoticed, which would have contaminated the surroundings of the plant. To find out, he borrows the shoes of an employee, who has just checked in. At that time, the order is given to evacuate. Clifford Robinson remains on site to analyze the samples taken from the worker’s shoes.
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