After the end of World War II, the allies in the anti-fascist coalition of the USA and the USSR began to establish their own order in the world. Competition gradually turned into a "cold war" that lasted for many years. In both countries, there was an active taming of "atomic energy". Many works were carried out quite successfully, but there were also failures. One of them was the accident, which was dubbed "Kyshtym".
Background
After the victory over Germany in 1945, the war continued, Japan resisted. The United States put a fat point by dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The whole world saw the destructive potential of atomic weapons. The Soviet Union could not allow the United States to single-handedly possess such a devastating weapon, and a few weeks after the bombing, Stalin ordered an urgent creation of his own bomb. A fairly young scientist, Igor Kurchatov, was appointed chief of the development. The work was personally supervised by Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria.
As part of the development of the atomic bomb, many cities in which work began were classified. One of these cities was Chelyabinsk-40, in which, by order of Kurchatov, plant number 817 was built, later renamed the Mayak plant, and the first nuclear reactor A-1, which the employees of the complex called Annushka. The launch of the reactor took place already in 1948, and the production of weapons-grade plutonium began.
Prerequisites
The enterprise has been successfully operating for nine years. Scientists, with their fanatical approach to work, very often put themselves and their subordinates at serious risk. The so-called "Kyshtym accident" was preceded by other, minor incidents, from which many employees of the enterprise received a serious dose of radiation. Many simply underestimated the dangers of nuclear power.
At first, waste from production was simply discharged into the river. Later, a method of storage in "banks" was invented. In huge pits 10-12 meters deep, there were concrete containers in which hazardous waste was stored. This method was considered to be quite safe.
Explosion
On September 29, 1957, an explosion occurred in one of these "cans". The storage lid, weighing about 160 tons, flew seven meters. At that moment, many residents of nearby villages and of Chelyabinsk-40 itself unequivocally decided that America had dropped one of its atomic bombs. In fact, the cooling system in the waste storage failed, which provoked rapid heating and a powerful release of energy.
Radioactive substances rose into the air to a height of more than one kilometer and formed a huge cloud, which later began to settle to the ground for three hundred kilometers in the direction of the wind. Despite the fact that almost 90% of harmful substances fell on the territory of the enterprise, a military town, a prison and small villages were in the contamination zone, the contaminated area was about 27,000 square kilometers.
Work on assessing the damage and reconnaissance of the radiation background on the territory of the plant and outside it began only the next day. The first results in nearby settlements showed that the situation is quite serious. Nevertheless, the evacuation and elimination of the consequences began only a week after the accident itself. Criminals, conscripts and even local residents were involved in the work. Many of them did not quite understand what they were doing. Most of the villages were evacuated, buildings were demolished, and all things were destroyed.
After the incident, Soviet scientists began to master a new technology for storing radioactive waste. The vitrification method began to be used. In this state, they are not subject to chemical reactions and storage of "vitrified" waste in special tanks is safe enough.
Consequences of the accident
Despite the fact that no one was killed in the explosion and large settlements were evacuated, in the first years after the accident, according to various estimates, about two hundred people died from radiation sickness. And the total number of victims to one degree or another is estimated at 250 thousand. In the most contaminated zone, with an area of about 700 square kilometers, a sanitary zone with a special regime was created in 1959, and 10 years later a scientific reserve was set up there. Today, the level of radiation there is still harmful to humans.
For a long time, information on this incident was classified, and in the first mentions the catastrophe was called "Kyshtym", although the city of Kyshtym itself has nothing to do with it. The fact is that secret cities and objects have never been mentioned anywhere other than secret documents. The government of the Soviet Union officially recognized that the accident was in fact only thirty years later. Some sources indicate that the American CIA knew about this disaster, but they chose to remain silent so as not to cause panic among the American population.
Some Soviet scientists gave interviews to foreign media and wrote articles about the nuclear incident in the Urals, but most of them were based on guesswork, and sometimes on fiction. The most popular claim was that a planned atomic bomb test had been carried out in the Chelyabinsk Region.
Contrary to all expectations, production was quickly resumed. After eliminating pollution on the territory of the plant, "Mayak" was launched again, and it functions to this day. Despite the mastered technology of rather safe vitrification of radioactive waste, scandals still arise around the plant. In 2005, it was unequivocally established in court that the production causes serious harm to people and nature.
In the same year, the head of the enterprise, Vitaly Sadovnikov, was prosecuted for the proven discharge of hazardous waste into the Techa River. But the following year, he came under an amnesty in honor of the centenary of the State Duma.
Vitaly took his seat again. And after leaving work in 2017, he received high gratitude.
Disputes about the Kyshtym accident still do not subside. So some media outlets are trying to downplay the scale of the disaster, while others, on the contrary, referring to secrecy and reticence, claim thousands of deaths. One way or another, more than sixty years later, people live there for whom this tragedy remains relevant today.
For some reason, not all were removed from the contaminated area. For example, the village of Tatarskaya Karabolka still exists, and people live in it, while it is only 30 kilometers from the source of the disaster. Many residents of the village took part in the elimination of the consequences. In 1957, about four thousand inhabitants lived in the village, and by today the population of Karabolka has decreased to four hundred people. And according to the documents, people from those places have long been "settled".
Living conditions in the contaminated area are terrible: for years, local people heated their houses with firewood, which is strictly prohibited (wood absorbs radiation well, it cannot be burned), only in 2016 gas was supplied to Karabolka, collecting 160 thousand rubles from residents. The water is also contaminated there - the experts, having made measurements, forbade drinking from the well. The administration promised to provide residents with imported water, but realizing that this was an almost impossible task, they carried out repeated measurements of their own and announced that now this water can be consumed.
The incidence of cancer there is 5-6 times higher than in the country as a whole. Local residents are still trying to achieve resettlement, but all attempts end with endless excuses from local authorities. In the 2000s, President Vladimir Putin drew attention to the resettlement situation and promised to sort it out. By 2019, the situation has not changed - people still live in mortal danger and die early from a variety of diseases caused by a dangerous environment.
