Kyshtym Disaster - Biggest Nuclear Disaster Before Chernobyl

the cold war and nuclear meltdown for most of us what immediately springs to mind is chernobyl or possibly three mile island but what if i told you that these weren't the first nuclear disasters some of you might be thinking of windscale or even sl1 but before all of those came kishtim the 1957 kishtun disaster is recognized as the world's first major nuclear disaster and ranks third in severity behind only the chernobyl and fukushima daichi disasters and yet despite this it's a largely unknown event so today grab your radax as we're going to talk about kishtim the cold war and why you've likely never even heard of it i'm your host david and this is the cold war the end of the second world war saw a large gap in the nuclear capabilities of the united states and the soviet union namely that the united states had atomic weapons and the soviet union didn't stalin felt that this situation was untenable especially given the post-war strategic tensions that were developing between moscow and washington dc as such the soviet union embarked on an accelerated nuclear program to develop their own atomic weapon of course this was only an acceleration of a program that was already in place on april 9 1945 the soviet government had already made the decision to build plant number 817 in chelyabinskoblast in the ural mountains this plant would be dedicated to the construction of the soviet atomic bomb construction was begun immediately and by 1948 the mayak nuclear reactor was complete the plant itself covered an approximate area of 90 square kilometers and was surrounded by a 250 square kilometer exclusion zone in order to maintain the secrecy of the project the secret town that was built for the plant now called azersk was originally named chelyabinsk 40 and by january 1949 the reactor was producing weapons-grade uranium and plutonium and a month later production of the nuclear weapons themselves was commenced now about the construction of the plant the town and the reactor much of the construction was carried out by over 40 000 prisoners from gulag or axis prisoner of war camps don't forget that the pows were being used by the soviets as part of ongoing reparations claims against their defeated enemies in the second world war the use of this labor however created several problems problems which eventually compromised the security of the site the first was the speed at which the project was undertaken since the soviets were in such a hurry to catch up to the united states nuclear program many security and safety precautions in the construction projects themselves were either overlooked or just ignored the other major problem lay in the lack of in-depth knowledge regarding nuclear science to be fair this was a brand new field of research and there were many unknowns but the combination of unknowns with breakneck speed and construction was creating a recipe for disaster and i can hear you already asking david can you tell us more specifically where the problems were well yes i can the two biggest problem areas lay with the inadequate attention paid to cooling systems on site as well as with how radioactive waste was being handled for anybody who knows anything about how reactors work these are two critical factors in safe operation failures in these areas are how disasters occur yeah that's a spoiler let's take a look at the waste management issues first well to begin with when the plant was first brought online the issue of waste was largely ignored high-level radioactive waste was being dumped directly into the nearby tetra river a tributary of the orb river which then flowed down to the arctic ocean eventually this practice was halted and the waste was being collected of course the devil being in the details the waste was collected and dumped into lake karachay close to lake gizeldash on which all six reactors at chelyabinsk 40 were built lake karachi became less of a lake and instead became a radioactive waste dump by 1953 an enclosed storage facility for liquid radioactive waste was constructed in at least a vague effort to decrease the extreme environmental impact the waste was having on the region keep in mind not only was the town of chelyabinsk 40 built on the shores of these lakes but the tetra river was the main source of drinking water for more than 20 surrounding villages the waste was poisoning the people as well as the entire ecology that depended on the tetcha for survival so it's a good thing that the waste collection facility was built right now that you've already got an idea of what is coming we should probably point out that the mayak complex had suffered from some smaller accidents in the early to mid 1950s although these were relatively small and locally contained in 1953 a radiation leak injured some of the reactor workers and in 1955 a rupture in some equipment partially destroyed one of the processing buildings so for a site that was only a few years old not a great safety track record but these incidents would prove to be minor relative to what happened on the 29th of september 1957. the collection tanks themselves were large steel tanks mounted on concrete sunk approximately eight meters into the ground the cooling system for one of the radioactive waste collection tanks holding between 70 to 80 tons of radioactive liquid had been malfunctioning for some time leading up to the 29th but it had been ignored and left unrepaired as you probably are aware one of the byproducts of radioactive material is heat as the heat increased the liquid in the tank evaporated leaving behind a radioactive mix of ammonium nitrate mixed with acetates these are the base components for an ammonium nitrate fuel oil bomb sometimes referred to as a fertilizer bomb as the temperature in the tank increased the chances of disaster increased with it on the 29th it happened the tank exploded with the force of approximately 70 to 100 tons of tnt the lid of the tank 160 tons of concrete was blown free and although this itself didn't cause any casualties the consequences for the surrounding area were devastating as 20 mega curies of radioactivity were released across the region steps were taken almost immediately after the blast occurred to try and mitigate the scope of the disaster hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians were mobilized to try and help clean up however in a move that would be repeated in 1986 these people often weren't given any special gear or protection evacuations did begin almost immediately as well but some of you may find the order in which these happened to be quite interesting first non-essential military units as well as prison inmates in the region were evacuated followed by production staff at mayak only after seven days since the explosion had passed was the civilian population informed as forced evacuations began there were approximately 270 people living in 217 towns villages and settlements across the impacted oblasts of chelyabinsk svedlovsk and tumen of these towns villages and settlements 23 of them made up of about 10 000 people were evacuated until 1960. across the region buildings animals belongings livestock and agricultural production were all burned and then buried in order to control the radiation for any of you who have watched hbo's excellent tv series chernobyl this might all seem eerily familiar those evacuated were compensated for their relocation including for their destroyed belongings now one of the primary goals in the period following the explosion was to try and contain the spread of radioactive material in order to aid this an exclusion zone was created in the affected areas preventing anybody from living or working there including fishing or agriculture this exclusion zone was maintained and enforced by the soviet police the militia and to this day remains a closed nature reserve under the control of the state atomic energy corporation rosabo so what were the effects of the kishtim disaster well from an economic perspective they were devastating 54 of agricultural land in the area was made unusable as well as huge swathes of forest and bodies of water for a region that relied on both agriculture and primary resource extraction for work the impact was enormous as for the human lives there were no actual direct fatalities from the explosion but since there's always a but there are estimates that up to 90 000 people in the region suffered from some form of radiation poisoning or radiation related illnesses most notably forms of cancer in the years that followed the explosion for context from a population of 270 thousand that's one in every three people i mentioned at the start that kistim is ranked as the third most severe nuclear disaster to date after chernobyl and fukushima daichi on the international nuclear event scale or inis measured on a scale from zero to seven kishtim has been ranked a level six a serious accident described as a significant release of radioactive material likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures so it's clearly a significant event in nuclear history but why don't more people know about it well we can thank the cold war for that the soviet union as a closed country and secretive about its nuclear program at the absolute best of times did everything it could to conceal the disaster cover stories were created to explain events and divert attention from the area for example a week after the explosion the chelyabinski raboche newspaper ran an article explaining that the orange red color in the sky from rising dust was the effects of the northern lights the aurora borealis aurora borealis at this time of year at this time of day in this part of the country localized entirely within your exclusion zone yes okay now this is the reaction that we would expect from the soviet union cover it up but what did the rest of the world know about kirsten a fair bit actually the united states government as you might expect knew about the disaster from the extensive use of atmospheric radiation measuring equipment that had been deployed as part of their monitoring of the soviet nuclear program and yet despite knowing about the disaster they didn't take the opportunity to embarrass the soviets on the international stage this choice was made since they knew the scale of public outcry that would be created at home about the american's own nuclear program as a quick aside regarding the american knowledge of the kishtim disaster it's been suggested that the reconnaissance mission that gary powers was on in his u2 plane when he was shot down in 1960 was to get footage of the area around mayak but we'll talk more about that when we get to gary powers now this wasn't to say that there was no public knowledge of the 1957 explosion in the west by the late 1950s there were scattered articles and reports about a nuclear accident in the soviet union as early as 1958 a danish newspaper had reported on the disaster it wasn't until 1978 however that kishden was confirmed by soviet sources this came from accounts of an exiled soviet dissident george medvedev who published information in the british journal new scientist medvedev's accounts were subsequently corroborated by another soviet exile leave timmerman timmerman wrote in the jerusalem post that quote about 100 kilometers from svedlovsk a highway sign warned drivers not to stop for the next 20 or 30 kilometers and to drive through at maximum speed on both sides of the road as far as one could see was dead no villages no towns only the chimneys of destroyed houses no cultivated fields or pastures no herds no people nothing it took until 1989 for official recognition of the disaster by the soviet union at the height of perestroika when the supreme soviet acknowledged the kishtim disaster finally we should ask what the legacy of kishtim is clearly the fact that both major nuclear powers of the time decided to cover up the incident despite different motivations for doing so is telling the soviet union feared the public black eye that they would suffer from the disaster the united states feared the backlash and outcry that their own nuclear programs might suffer clearly realizing how important nuclear armaments were for their own security doctrine in hindsight we can also see that the soviet union did not learn from kishnim as less than 30 years later another major nuclear incident occurred in the soviet union one which came with massive social and economic upheaval which some have suggested led to the collapse of the soviet union itself now that being said before the comment section explodes with suggestions that totalitarian systems cause these incidents it is important to remind everybody that other nuclear disasters have occurred in the non-totalitarian west the common thread behind all of these disasters has always been lacks safety protocols and lack of sufficient redundancies to ensure adequate safety for all involved if we vary the knowledge of our mistakes it becomes impossible to learn from them we hope you've enjoyed today's episode and to make sure you don't miss all of our future episodes please make sure you're subscribed to our channel and have a press the bell button we can be reached via email at thecoldwar channel gmail.com and we're active on facebook and instagram at the cold war tv if you enjoy our work your financial support would be greatly appreciated via www.patreon.com the cold war or through youtube membership this is the cold war channel and don't forget the trouble with the cold war is that it doesn't take too long before it becomes heated

Channel: The Cold War

Views: 240,199

Rating: 4.9086318 out of 5

Keywords: Tito, Stalin, Cold War, josip broz tito, soviet union, stalin documentary, kings and generals, operation unthinkable, the cold war, soviet, world war II, USSR, US, America, capitalism, west, east, us, ussr, un, reconstruction, pows, hungary, china, vietnam, marshal plan, stalin, france, nato, united states, uk, malenkov, khrushchev, eisenhower, suez crisis, warsaw pact, east germany, maclean, cambridge five, spy, sino-soviet split, cuba, castro, batista, fidel, revolution, chernobyl, kyshtym, nuclear disaster

Id: j45g9oCLjtk

Length: 15min 19sec (919 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 12 2020