Russian nuclear accident at Mayak plutonium, Kyshtym, 1957

[Christophe]

The Russian nuclear accident at the Mayak (or Mayak) nuclear center is the first large-scale nuclear accident affecting civilians in history. It has already been mentioned several times, notably by dedeleco, on forums, here or there for example:
https://www.econologie.com/forums/accident-n ... 9-120.html
https://www.econologie.com/forums/la-france- ... 5-110.html

This subject aims to provide a little more info on these facts kept secret by the Soviet administration for almost 30 years (up to Chernobyl in fact ...).

Wiki summary:

1957 Mayak nuclear complex (in Kyshtym not far from the city of Chelyabinsk, USSR). A powerful explosion in a radioactive waste storage center projected about two million curies of radioactive products at an altitude of more than one kilometer, and almost ten times more into the environment of the installation, or about half quantities released to Chernobyl. At least 200 people perished, the application of emergency measures involved the evacuation of approximately 10 people, a prohibited area of ​​000 km² (level 250 on the INES scale) and signs "close the windows and drive the as quickly as possible ”installed on the edges of the surrounding roads. The Soviet regime kept the defense secret on this accident, the first information will not be revealed until 6 by the Soviet biologist Jaurès Medvedev immigrated to England. In the daily newspaper Liberation of August 1976, 24, "radioactive materials rise to the surface with the gushing of groundwater," says Igor Forofontov of Greenpeace Russia [2000].

Wiki page on the Mayak complex:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complexe_n ... aire_Mayak



Disaster wiki page:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophe_de_Kyshtym


(a Curie is quite huge as a unit: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion ... ivit.C3.A9 )

A report concerning this catastrophe was diffused yesterday either in Arte Reportage, visible in stream during 7 days here:
http://videos.arte.tv/fr/videos/arte_re ... 91380.html

It is the second and main report which is particularly interesting (Russian "closed" nuclear cities which did not all disappear with the USSR !!)

ARTE Report

(...)

Russia: Ozersk, nuclear secret city

Twenty years after the dissolution of the USSR, two million Russians still live in secret, as in Soviet times, in 42 closed towns known as "ZATO". Cities linked to military industry or nuclear energy production.

Remainder of the Soviet era, the inhabitants, subject to special regulations for all their movements, yet see themselves as privileged, protected from the world by high gates. But others are fighting against a system that keeps secrets around defective nuclear installations, with disregard for local populations and the environment.
Ozersk and its Makak complex are a fine example. The Mayak region, which produced all of the plutonium from the Cold War, is today a nuclear waste bin. Protected by its ZATO status.

The secret is such that it allowed to conceal, for almost 30 years, the first nuclear accident in the world: the explosion in 1957 of a tank of waste, following a breakdown of the cooling circuit. The radioactive cloud had then affected nearly 300 people, covering 000 km²… 23 villages had been evacuated.
50 years later, the victims and the "liquidators", forced to clean up the region, are still waiting for help. Others are irradiated day after day by fumes from the uranium reprocessing plants in Mayak. And the population is defenseless.

Nadiejda founded Planète Espoirs there, to defend the rights to freedom and a decent environment for the people of the region. And it defends victims of traffic restrictions such as those of radioactivity.

(...)

Always after-effects on humans and the environment more than 50 years later, it is a safe bet that in Fukushima, this is also the case ... moreover the 1st report concerned nuclear in Japan and the legacy of Hiroshima and that of Fukushima to come: https://www.econologie.com/forums/accident-n ... 10579.html

Japan nuclear ill

For a few days, in a Japan once again bruised, the survivors of Hiroshima have been making their voices heard.
The "Hibakushas" were almost the only anti-nuclear in the country, but today their words resonate with the concerns of the Japanese as a whole.
This report, meeting an increasingly worried Japan, begins at the radiation treatment center of this city, which will receive the irradiated from Fukushima ... It continues, in Kaminoseki, where the population is mobilizing strongly against a nuclear power plant project, then in Kobe, martyr city of the 95 earthquake and in Hamaoka, where there is a nuclear power plant affected by the last earthquake and its aftershocks, but far from being destroyed like Fukushima. This plant is the most controversial in Japan: it was built according to specialists on the epicenter of the future "big one" ...
This journey ends as close as possible to Fukushima, still very unstable. The ARTE Reportage team is trying to understand the questions that the Japanese are asking themselves today regarding the nuclear future. Japanese people who, until now, between pragmatism and discipline, had accepted the necessity.

[dedeleco]

these facts kept secret by the Soviet administration for almost 30 years (up to Chernobyl in fact ...).

Also "kept secret by" the US and Western secret services and our entire nuclear lobby, voluntarily, when they knew, given the scale of releases into the environment, even higher than Chernobyl, detected all over the planet, the classification in level 6 of this disaster is a scandal, because it must be at 7 identical to Chernobyl !!

The first to suspect the secret and alert is Jaurès Medvedev in 1976:
http://www.dissident-media.org/infonucl ... lence.html
and I remember this article in New Scientist which had stunned me by the total silence in our nuclear power, and in 1977, I remember asking the question about what he thought of a scientist professor at the College of France in close contact with our nuclear Lobby, who replied with a shrug of the shoulder: "you will not believe everything the journalists say" !!.
It was too disturbing this multitude of Russian articles on the effects of radiation !!
Jaurès Medvedev is a biologist specializing in radioisotopes and not a journalist. It was only after 1986 that this accident became official and fully confirmed.
Our nuclear lobby knew and hid all together this catastrophe which should cause us to reflect.
We still hide because we often forget it in the list, we classify it 6 instead of 7, etc.

Thus, for example, he discovers that migratory birds have been systematically destroyed in the contaminated area, in order to limit the spread of radioactivity. In insects, the ant seems to be the most resistant to radioactivity; the beetles halved; As for the small animals that live in the soil, where the radioactive dust is concentrated, they have almost completely disappeared. In areas of high contamination, pines and birches have died by entire stations. Elsewhere, "many chromosomal abnormalities have been observed in pine meristem cells". Medvedev deplores the fact that Soviet research has practically neglected population genetics, apart from a few studies on the fruit fly, mice and a terrestrial alga.
Regarding men, the biologist notes that the city of Kychtym had 16 inhabitants in 000, 1926 in 38 and more than 000 in 1936. But no one can say how many of that number have died or been evacuated. All testimonies point to crowded hospitals, panic in big cities, prohibited traffic and severely controlled food. This allows Medvedev to conclude that "the disaster in the Urals was undoubtedly the greatest nuclear tragedy in peacetime that the world has ever known". In the absence of more precise information, it is not known whether Chernobyl has overturned this hierarchy of disasters.

Also read on the same date:
http://www.dissident-media.org/infonucl ... scale.html
http://www.dissident-media.org/infonucl ... onium.html
http://www.dissident-media.org/infonucl ... field.html
http://www.dissident-media.org/infonucleaire/

[Obamot]

My answer going beyond the framework of this thread, I put it there:
https://www.econologie.com/forums/post198600.html#198600