The 'Kyshtym Accident', which happened on 29 September 1957 at the Mayak Production Association (PA) nuclear complex, located about 10 km to the east of the town of Kyshtym in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russian Federation, although rated on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale as one of the most severe nuclear accidents in the world, remained little known in the … Charles Digges holds both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Russian literature from Harvard University. Now the Russian Government is considering plans to import nuclear waste to Mayak from around the world.[2]. A post-war population of mostly women and children were given rags and mops – and no protective gear – to sop up what they were told was the mess from a coal boiler explosion in the village of Kyshtym. Known as the Kyshtym Disaster, the incident occurred at Mayak, a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant sequestered in the closed city of Ozyorsk, near the town of Kyshtym. The liquid radioactive waste was discharged directly into the Techa river. Gosman Kabirov, NGO "TECHA": The barbed wire worked only for cattle. Due to the contamination of the territory the plant was closed. Later the orphanage was closed and the former pupils dispersed all over the country. Within 10 hours radioactive cloud spread over the Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk, and Tyumen regions over 23,000 km². In 1957 Mayak was the site of the Kyshtym disaster, which at the time was the worst nuclear accident in history. (Wikimedia Commons: Jan Rieke) Map of the East Urals Radioactive Trace (EURT), the area contaminated by the Kyshtym disaster. Gosman Kabirov, NGO "TECHA": We are in the Hudoberdinsk village of the Sargoyashskiy region in the Cheyabinsk oblast located 5 km from the Mayak facility in a downwind area. A column of radioactive dust and smoke rocketed skyward for a half mile, which sent down a sooty fallout. Out of sight, out of mind. The Kyshtym Accident was a chemical explosion in a highly radioactive waste liquid storage tank, which led to a cloud of radioactive material spreading contamination to the north-east of Mayak, forming the East Urals Radioactive Trace (EURT). According to research of the Mayak experts in the case of the dam destruction radioactive water will reach the Muslyumovo village in 8 hours. Originally known as Chelyabinsk-40, the complex was later renamed to the Mayak Production Association and served as the location for the emerging Soviet nuclear program in the years immediately following World War II. The Soviet government included details about it in a report on Chernobyl that it submitted to the United Nations in 1986 – finally blowing its cover. It’s called the Kyshtym disaster and before the mid 1980s the town’s official location wasn’t even designated on a map. The people who leave Muslyumovo loose their rights for compensation, it is as if the health ruined by radiation could be restored at once. He has worked in Bellona’s Russian program/team since 2001. (...) A sadly famous village of Muslyumovo. According to expert research just the tritium concentration alone in the Techa River near the village Muslyumovo exceeds the permissible limit by 30 times. There is the Karachay Lake on the territory of Mayak which is used for open-air storage of liquid radioactive wastes. I know that according to sanitary norms construction is prohibited in case the radioactivity level is 100 Bq - in this place and area is subject to compulsory resettlement in case of 200 Bq. It affected the same territory of the Eastern-Ural Radioactive Trace and again the residents of the local settlements became victims of radioactive exposure. 400 million m³ of radioactive waters and bottom sediments will spread over the villages downstream the Techa River and migrate into the open hydrographic network of Tobol-Irtish-Ob and the Arctic Ocean. It resulted in increase of radiation background in the Techa River, dreadful environment contamination and threat to life of the residential population not only in Chelyabinsk, but, also in the neighbouring Kurgansk region. Gosman Kabirov, NGO "TECHA": There is the mill of the merchant Zlokazov behind me. To follow the river’s northerly flow is to draw a morbid map of mortality and disease: record rates of chromosomal abnormalities, birth defects and cancers vastly higher than the Russian average mark each new village it passes. The authorities should have intervened and stopped the waste discharge. The only other nuclear accident to be rated a 7, the highest on the international scale, was Chernobyl in 1986 in Ukraine. The alleged Kyshtym disaster has been an intriguing intelligence puzzle for almost 25 years. In 1941 a glue production factory was moved to here from Leningrad. During the clean-up, each person could only afford to spend a maximum of 40 seconds inside or near the facility. They could only take away our fishing rods. And while engineering heroics have finally been brought to bear on the smoldering sarcophagus at Chernobyl, and robots troll the wreckage of Fukushima, this catastrophe by many accounts continues to churn radioactivity into the environment and to sicken a hostage population. Because of the intense secrecy surrounding Mayak, it is difficult to estimate the death toll of Kyshtym. The tank held highly radioactive waste which overheated and blew, belching up a 160-ton cement cap buried twenty-four feet underground and tossing it in the air. 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