Kyshtym Disaster

By EH90

  • Mayak Plant

    Mayak Plant
    • The Mayak plant was built between 1945-1948 by the Soviet Union after World War II.
    • The plant was a nuclear reactor to create plutonium.
    • It was a secret operation and was carried out by 70,000 inmates from labor camps.

  • Nuclear Waste

    Nuclear Waste
    • The Mayak plant produced the first Soviet nuclear bomb and demands became very high soon after.
    • High levels of nuclear waste due to rapid production was being dumped into the Techa river and Lake Karacha (most contaminated place on earth)
    • Lake Kyzyltash was being used as an open cycle cooling system.

  • Storage facility and Cooling system

    Storage facility and Cooling system
    • Roughly 3 million Ci was released into the Techa river (major source of water for locals) causing breakouts of radiation sickness.
    • Due to multiple lakes and rivers being contaminated a storage facility for nuclear waste was created.
    • The waste would heat up due to decay heat from high levels of radioactivity, so a cooling system was built around the storage tanks.

  • The Explosion

    The Explosion
    • Due to inadequate monitoring a malfunctioning cooling system failed and was not repaired.
    • The high temperatures resulted in evaporation and explosion of the storage tank.
    • The explosion released up to 80 tons of nuclear waste (20 Million Curies)
    • The fallout of the radioactive cloud affected a rough estimate of 270,000 people and contaminated up to 20,000 sq/km with primarily cesium-137 and strontium-90.

  • Evacuation

    Evacuation
    • Farmers were required to plow their farmland, slaughter their livestock and bury their crops the day after the explosion but…
    • It took a week from the accident to evacuate people.
    • About 10,000 people from 20 villages were evacuated and was said to have taken 2 years.

  • Restrictive Regime

    Restrictive Regime
    • Economic use of 59,000 hectares of land were withdrawn.
    • Sanitary Protective Zone (SPZ) was established and it prohibited residence and economic activities.
    • The population still continued to use parts of the SPZ due to lack of information about the contamination.

  • Restrictions on food/crop/livestock

    Restrictions on food/crop/livestock
    • Up until 1961 it was prohibited to pick mushrooms or berries, farm/garden, or keep cattle.
    • Grain/grain products, milk and potatoes were the most important contributors of food.
    • Rapid radioactive decay of radionuclides resulted in an increase in stronium 90 contribution to the total beta activity in bread.

  • East Ural Nature Reserve

    East Ural Nature Reserve
    • 2 MCi was spread beyond the Mayak PA site after the explosion and formed the East Ural Radioactive Trace (EURT).
    • In order to hide this the East Ural Nature Reserve was created in 1968.
    • It prohibited any unauthorized access to the area.

  • Zhores Medvedev

    Zhores Medvedev
    • Because of the secrecy, the disaster was not widely known until almost 2 decades later.
    • Zhores Medvedev, a Soviet biologist, reported on the incident in detail.
    • Unfortunately, this disaster was not fully known for another decade due to many skeptics that found his report reasonings unpersuasive. Although the CIA were already aware of this fact well before Zhores report.

  • Secret’s Out

    Secret’s Out
    • Some details of the Mayak explosion was reported with the Chernobyl disaster to the UN in 1986.
    • The Soviet government still tried to deny the incident until 1989.
    • Documents of the accident were gradually declassified, but they still tried to downplay the severity of it.

  • The effects on the Population

    The effects on the Population
    • A study that was done in 2002 that the population near the Techa river and Mayak plant workers were still being affected.
    • As of today certain areas of the EURT are still considered off limits due to radioactivity.
    • There’s no way to be certain on the number of people who were diagnosed with cancer or had chronic radiation syndrome for many different reasons: secrecy for almost 30 years, natural incidence of cancer, radiation poisoning from the river before the explosion, etc.