-
Mayak Plant was Developed
- Located in Chelyabinsk Oblast Russia. In the Ural mountain range on the border of Europe and Asia.
- Secretly known as Chelyabinsk-40.
- The plant was rapidly developed between 1945-1948 after world war II in an effort to catch up to the US in the development of nuclear weapons.
-
Radiation Dumping into Water Sources
- The Mayak plant dumped radioactive waste into the water between 1948-1952.
- The plant began dumping radioactive waste into a nearby river that led to the Ob River.
- The nuclear reactors were located on Lake Kyzyltash and they used an open-cycle cooling system that would release the contaminated water back into the lake.
- After Lake Kyzyltash became too contaminated, they began using Lake Karachay for open-air storage.
- This quickly made Lake Karachay the "most polluted spot on Earth".
-
Nuclear Waste Storage Developed
- A storage facility was created to store liquid nuclear waste.
- It was located 8.2 meters underground and was made out of steel tanks mounted in a concrete base.
- The nuclear waste was heating itself through decay heat, so they built a cooler around each bank which consisted of 20 tanks.
-
Explosion Part II
- One tenth of the radioactive material was released into the air which fell over an area of 20,000 sq. miles.
- A plume of smoke and dust was lifted into the air a kilometer high. It had a reddish orange flicker to it and landed all over buildings and people.
- Industrial workers tracked the substance all over town on shoes and clothing before anyone knew what had happened.
- There were no casualties reported from the initial explosion.
-
Explosion
- A tank of high-level liquid nuclear waste which was improperly stored underground exploded.
- The cooling system failed inside one of the storage tanks that contained 70-80 tons of nuclear waste.
- The tank reaching a temperature of about 660 °F exploded with a force equivalent to at least 70 tons of TNT
- The 160-ton concrete cover was ripped off by the force and destroyed a brick wall in a building 200 meters away.
-
Evacuation
- 270,000 people lived within the area of disaster.
- It took them a week to decide to start to evacuate people.
- Only 11,000 people were evacuated over a span of two years.
- Those who stayed were pressed into cleaning up debris and destroying crops and livestock that had been contaminated.
- The people who helped clean up were given no protection against radiation and continued to live in their homes.
-
Newspaper Reports
- The disaster was kept secret and was covered up.
- Over the years it became less and less of a secret.
- In 1958 a Copenhagen newspaper was the first to report on a "catastrophic accident" relating to a soviet nuclear weapon test.
- In 1959 an Austrian newspaper reported on an accident involving a "Soviet atomic plant".
- In 1962 the disaster was mentioned in a review of Nuclear incidents as an "Unconfirmed report of a major reactor incident".
-
East Ural Nature Reserve
- Established to preserve the contaminated area.
- The reserve covers 64 Sq. miles of land.
- The reserve was created to study the effects of radiation from the Kyshtym Disaster on nature surrounding that area of the Ural Mountains.
-
Known to the World
- Zhores Medvedev who was a soviet dissident that released an account of the disaster for the world to see.
- It was unconfirmed whether his account could be considered reliable.
- His account stirred up a bit of a panic with talk of unknown mysterious diseases breaking out from the exposure.
- While exaggerated the core of his story was confirmed by Professor Lev Tumerman, who was the former head of the Biophysics Laboratory at the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow.
-
Current Information (2002-2022)
- The current radiation level around this area is 0.1 mSv a year which is considered harmless.
- According to a 2002 study the people who remained in the area and the plant workers are still affected by the doses received.
- Those that haven't already died are thought to be at higher risks for cancers.