Kyshtym Mayak: The 2nd Worst Nuclear Disaster in Soviet History

it is late afternoon september 29th 1957 chelyabinsk district in the southern ural mountains the soviet union residents notice an unusual yet spectacular display of colors in the sky ranging from deep blue to violet local press will interpret this as a strange case of the northern lights appearing much farther south than usual but the mesmerizing colours carry a threat of death issued by the nearby facility known as mayak or castley they are the early visible signs of the first large-scale nuclear accident to happen in history welcome to kishtim a crisis outstripped only by chernobyl and fukushima in terms of severity and a catastrophe whose causes and consequences were hidden from nearly everyone for decades [Music] the mayak facility was located in kishtim a russian town within the chelyabinsk blast on the eastern side of the southern ural mountains today we're talking about it as the epicenter of a disaster but even without such catastrophic events kishtim would be a noteworthy topic during the cold war this nuclear site was under the surveillance of the cia for decades and while its purpose was not initially clear it later emerged that mayak and nearby facilities were the birthplace of the soviet nuclear program initial work on the site was conducted from 1945 to 1948. as was usual for the ussr in that period the bulk of the work was conducted by forced labor up to 70 000 inmates were transported from 12 labor camps of the infamous gulag system these were camps where criminals dissidents and perceived enemies of the regime could be locked up for life providing slave labor to the state-owned industries the kishtim workforce thus included political prisoners standard criminals and prisoners of war in the spring of 1948 the entire local population as well as the convicted labor force were evacuated in a mass relocation the laborers presumably returned to their gulags but the details around how the soviet authorities displaced the original inhabitants of the kishtim area are unclear we can only assume that they were relocated to protect the secrecy of the operations at the nuclear plant after the eviction was concluded a new wave of settlers arrived described by a cia report as communists and their dependents who came to kishtim from all over the ussr they were reportedly never to leave the area again we can interpret this statement to mean that the new settlers were soviet loyalists and their families or co-workers they may have been assigned to work on a program so secret that they would not be allowed to ever leave again most of the work kishtim was conducted around a restricted area of 2 700 square kilometers encompassing eight small lakes connected by narrow waterways thanks to high altitude air recon the cia was able to gather that the main atomic reactor was placed in a tunnel dug beneath one of these water courses only a smoke stack was visible above the ground a cia source described an interesting detail of the construction the laborers had completely drained one of the eight lakes and built a structure on its dry bed the building was made of cement rubber and lead then the lake was refilled with water and the area was connected to the outer perimeter via a double track railroad now i'm not an expert on the engineering best practices of a nuclear reactor but this underwater structure sounds like it was meant to contain or process hazardous nuclear waste with the lead and the water itself both likely intended as insulating layers against the radiation this appeared to be consistent with the official purpose of the kishtim plant according to reports and communiques issued by the soviet government the plant was designed to process nuclear waste produced by other reactors in the country however the cia source collected information that contradicted the ussr's official party line the kischtim plant did not just process waste from other facilities but could boast its own atomic piles and nuclear reactor the sai was involved in the production of radioactive material intended for the radiological institute in nearby sungle which sounds like a medical institution right well according to the bulletin of atomic scientists the sungl institute was actually the chief design lab for the soviet nuclear program the u.s equivalent would have been the los alamos laboratories moreover quiche team was reported as manufacturing components for atomic weapons more proof of this can be gleaned by the amount of personnel involved in the plant which gives an idea of its importance as of 1956 the cia reported that kishtim and nearby azersk were home to military personnel from various army units including assam battery the number of troops is not specified but consider this after construction was over the plant was heavily staffed with about 41 000 forced laborers such a mass of prisoners requires at least one guard per 10 inmates which should work in shifts of at least three per day so that's 12 000 troops plus the cia agent reports that the area around kishtim was not protected by fences or barbed wire but the lack of structures was more than compensated by a heavy presence of armed guards maintaining a tight security perimeter and restricted movement of personnel so with the guards for the prisoners the security personnel add to that the logistics and signal units and i'm going to guess the keystone was garrisoned with at least 15 000 troops that's three army begrades or one division could a simple waste disposal facility justify the presence of an entire army division the composition of the labor force also deserves some attention it consisted of 16 000 regular prisoners plus 25 000 russian liberation army soldiers formerly under general vladov back in june 1942 red army lieutenant general andre vlassov had been captured by the germans at the siege of leningrad after a short period in captivity he had decided to defect to the axes as he considered himself a russian patriot but was opposed to the soviet government in december he obtained permission to form a collaborationist force known as the russian liberation army to fight against the red army vlassot's army first saw action in december 1944 and at its peak the group numbered 200 000 troops as the red army rolled the axes back into central europe the russian liberation army made an escape to western europe to surrender to the western allies but the majority of them were handed back to the soviets they duly punished vlasov's men by executing them or deporting them to a gulag general blasov himself was hanged on august 1 1946. so 10 years later a large force of the former russian liberation army was still employed as essentially disposable slaves exposed to high levels of radiation after the mayak plant and sungle laboratory had produced the first soviet nuclear bomb the government demanded more this led to shortened production timelines and the disregard of safety measures as a result 17 245 workers received radiation overdoses between 1948 and 1958. moreover the dumping of radioactive waste into nearby rivers from 1949 to 1952 caused several breakouts of radiation sickness in villages downstream residents of the area were thus familiar with the invisible dangers coming from the kishtim site but were they prepared for the disaster to come it is now time to get to the day of the disaster september 29 1957. according to 1991 reports from the international nuclear information system or inis the accident originated at a plutonium separation plant the cause was the failure of inadequate cooling systems in a tank used to dispose of highly radioactive waste the cooling feature ignited dry nitrate and acetate salts which in turn caused an explosion of the waste material the explosion dispersed nuclear fission products over an area 300 kilometers long and 66 kilometers wide home to about 270 000 people the overall radioactivity of the debris had been estimated by inis at 20 million curies i feel now is a good time to clarify units of measurement for radioactivity as there are a lot of them curies measure the amount of radioactivity with the unit used by the ionis in its report currently the most used unit of radioactivity as the bear corral twenty million curies are equivalent to seven hundred and forty peta becquerels that number seven hundred and forty petabecquarels is a seventy-four followed by sixteen zeros a healthy human body has an activity of just 8 000 becquerels and you can keep your calculators in your desk because we've crunched the math for you that's more than 90 trillion times the healthy limit so what is the impact of 20 million curies or 740 petabear corrals well this is actually measured with another set of units one of them being the seibert this includes the amount of radiation deposited on human tissue a 1994 study by doctors acklier ev and louis chansky estimated that 1054 inhabitants of the closest villages were hit with a radiation dose of 517 millisieverts directly affecting their bone marrow for context people are normally allowed to be exposed to radiation levels of two or three millisieverts every year these people received 200 times that and just consider that exposure to 350 millisieverts was the criterion for relocating people after the chernobyl accident the ionis report also specified that more than 90 of the radioactive material dispersed by the explosion consisted of cerium and zirconium isotopes which did not cause much worry these are categorized as short-lived radionucleotides decaying within five years but 2.7 percent of the waste consisted of strontium-90 and that's a very different story this small amount of strontium-90 caused a decades-long radiological hazard in the area affecting bodies of water small animals crops and working its way up the food chain to humans at its peak the radiation caused by strontium was 4 000 curies per square kilometer that is approximately 18 billion times more than the average human body activity this isotope became responsible for persistent high levels of dangerous radiation in the so-called eastern euros radioactive trail following the accident the maya plants were surrounded by frenzied government activity containment and evacuation efforts were underway it was clear to all residents that this was not a case of northern lights showing up way down south within 10 days of the explosion more than a thousand inhabitants had again been relocated away from the extreme evacuation zone a further 10 000 would be evacuated in staggered stages over a period of almost two years peasants were ordered to slaughter their livestock and bury their crops depending on sources between 20 and 32 towns and villages were evacuated in the aftermath the soviet government under first secretary nikita khrushchev desperately wanted to try and keep the accident a secret it was not good pr to publicize such a disaster at the heart of the soviet nuclear program most of what happened in and around keysteam during that autumn remains shrouded in secrecy or to misuse a winston churchill quote a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma nonetheless an unspecified cia source managed to collect some testimonies about the event writing a short but chilling report of the immediate aftermath the report number cs3 389 was distributed on march the 4th 1959 more than one year after the event the agent tells how all the food stores in kishtim had been closed after the explosion as a precaution against radiation exposure new supplies had to be brought in by train and truck the food was distributed directly from the vehicles with long queues rapidly forming reminiscent of rationing during world war ii the people of kishtim received news from the nearby town of kamensk uralskiv civilians had started to fall to an unknown mysterious disease which was most likely radiation sickness witness accounts spoke of severely diseased people whose skin was literally falling off it was later estimated that 200 inhabitants died of cancer caused by radiation although a definitive death toll is difficult to confirm as the incidence of the sickness grew with time so did the fear of the population described by the report as growing hysterical a few leading citizens were spotted wearing small radiation count as a clear sign of privilege as these were not commonly available to the general population this top brass must have felt safer against radiation sickness but it may not have spared them from other types of trouble the agent makes a note of how this state of things aroused public anger the agent's report includes testimonies collected from two soviet emigres one in england and the other in israel they reported that the nuclear accident had caused a vast nothingness resembling a lunar landscape around kishtim where no vegetation nor wildlife could grow or exist shortly after the disaster had occurred authorities moved in for the cleanup operations as it was often the case in the ussr this dangerous job was assigned to inmates of the gulag system surprise surprise according to another declassified cia memo prisoners were offered shorter sentences or even pardons in exchange for their work kishkim but gulag authorities clearly did not expect these prisoners to survive until their releases they called their teams death squads or death brigades one year after the accident the doomsday landscape had not improved much according to a cia report dated the 16th of february 1961 people around the area affected were still avoiding the local bodies of water food produced locally was taken for inspection to the district capital of chelyabinsk 100 kilometers southeast of kishtim people traveling to kishtim were detained at the local train station carefully inspected and allowed to enter the town only if they had a special permit and many of the contaminated villages had been burned to the ground to prevent resettlement its inhabitants had been forcibly relocated with little more than the clothes on their back [Music] the cia memos did not have much of an impact outside of the intelligence community and the cia was actually responsible for this while the agency did not hide their findings they also avoided any effort to make the disaster widely known to the public it seems counterintuitive why not highlight the fact that the soviet nuclear facilities were marred by poor safety measures but the aim of the cia was to protect the image of the nuclear industry as a whole and especially to avoid the public questioning the safety of the hanford nuclear site in washington state by 1959 in fact hanford had been expanded with the new n reactor this was the only dual purpose facility in the united states used to both produce plutonium for atomic weapons and to generate electricity the disaster became better known to the general public in 1976 thanks to soviet dissident biologist johorez medvedev medvedev was able to give some details on how the medical situation was handled following the disaster apparently the soviet government took the treatment of injured and contaminated citizens very seriously the deputy minister of health of the ussr professor a ibers nyan was dispatched to assemble specialized medical teams in nearby chelyabinsk and sverdlovsk he was helped by professor gd by sonolov an expert in radiology and radiation sickness the medical aspects of the disaster however including incidence of radiation disease and death toll were classified professor byzonolov was able to write a report describing 11 cases of radiation sickness but it was never published from his part as a consequence of his experience professor berznian later strongly opposed the location of nuclear power stations near inhabited centers medvedev also estimated that soviet academia had published more than 150 studies of the effects of the long-term contamination in kishkim on both crops and the environment as well as the impacts on the genetics of plants and animals these studies had zero visibility in the west even in the ussr they had scarce impact the problem is that they never acknowledged that the high radiation levels in the eastern urals radioactive trail was linked to an accident from 1971 onwards the construction of nuclear power stations became a priority for the soviet energy program and again academia downplayed the risk of disasters and the possible negative impact on the environment an article by envy kulakov published in 1981 in the journal ecologia presented a complete absence of contamination in the soil or waters near nuclear stations according to kolokov it was common practice to produce food supplies very close to soviet nuclear power stations the warm water from the cooling systems flowed into ponds used to raise schools of fish heat emanating from the reactors was trapped into greenhouses these stations were surrounded by buffer areas or health protective zones 2.5 kilometers in radius however these areas were used as pastures for cattle for allotments and even recreation parks because that sounds safe in general the medvedev reports showed how anything that could be learned from the kishtim disaster was widely ignored in the ensuing decades resulting in the mistakes which later led to the disaster at chernobyl medvedev's analysis and disclosures were obviously concerned with the events of september 1957. however the kish team plant was at the center of other contamination-related events much of the waste from the nuclear reactor had accumulated on the bottom of lake karachay some 30 kilometers west of kishtim from april the 10th to may 15 1967 the dried out contaminated sediments from the lake were dispersed by wind up to a distance of 75 kilometers an estimated 22 terabytes of radioactive material namely cesium 137 was deposited over a surface of 1 800 square kilometers lake harrison actually has its own geographics video if you're interested in checking that out please do opt won't go on much more about it here as you may imagine both disasters plus the continued release of radiation and waste had lasting effects on the health of keystone workers and other local inhabitants studies conducted by dr cosenko in the 1990s found that the impacted population had a higher than average incidence of leukemia and solid tumors about 40 of all leukemia deaths in the area were linked to radiation exposure and dr cosenko points out that the risk of contracting cancer in the area was comparable to values found in atomic bomb survivors additional research by siberia medical university found an increase in the frequency of chromosome aberrations in the blood cells of affected locals another study by casenko ever found that there is no conclusive evidence that these aberrations may have caused mutations in the children born around kishtim anecdotal evidence suggests that the fauna may have mutated in the area though some fishermen in the southern murals have reported catching fish with no eyes and no fins then there is the case of the kishtim dwarf in the summer of 1996 a retired kish team woman called tamara possvarina was spotted walking around town with a bundle in her arms which was apparently a baby she called him alexei or alyashenko and fed him milk and cottage cheese several residents met ayushenko describing him as 25 centimeters tall humanoid with brown skin no hair and large protruding eyes nobody knew where the baby had come from tamara was hospitalized due to schizophrenia and in her absence nobody took care of the baby predictably he died of neglect his body was collected by a friend of tamara who mummified it this man was later arrested and the body of the mysterious kishdeen dwarf was collected by police officer vladimir bendlin the press described bendlin as the fox mulder of the urals the first person who tried to make sense of this story while being sober benlin consulted several experts on the origins of the strange body a pathologist claimed that alyashenka was not human while a gynecologist gave a more realistic assessment the dwarf could have been a baby born with terrible deformations perhaps due to radiation benlin kept the body in his fridge until he made a mistake he handed it over to a group of ufologists for their expertise unfortunately the experts vanished into thin air and so did aliashenka more recently the mayak plant at kishtim has been the center of another investigation this time of a more scientific kind a november 2019 article in the american journal proceedings of the national academy of sciences covers the case of a plume of russenium 106 that was detected across europe in 2017. the research team led by dr mason of the french institute of nuclear safety believed the plume was released following a sizable yet undeclared nuclear accident the concentrations of the radioactive isotope while ultimately harmless were well above the normal average wind and weather conditions suggested that the plume came from the southern urals region placing the mayak plant high in the list of suspects investigations were conducted by an independent ngo the french commission for independent research and information on radioactivity soil samples collected 16 kilometers from the kishtim site indicated an abnormal presence of ruthenium-106 this piece of evidence was ultimately deemed inconclusive however the case reawakens the concerns around the eventuality of nuclear accidents i'm aware that the topic of nuclear plant safety is certainly controversial however i should point out that according to the world nuclear association the evidence over six decades shows that nuclear power is a safe means of generating electricity on top of that the international atomic energy agency or iaea repeatedly remarks that nuclear power plants are among the safest and most secure facilities in the world that continues to be mostly true as long as the government involved is not the ussr so i really hope you found that video 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Channel: Geographics

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Length: 21min 12sec (1272 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 15 2021