Lake Karachay: The USSR’s Deadly Nuclear Lake

it was once the deadliest lake on earth at the moment the soviet union collapsed in a cloud of broken communist dreams lake karachay was likely the most contaminated site in the former ussr a storage place for radioactive waste material generated by the mark nuclear facility in the closed city of chelyabinsk 40 carachae had spent decades accumulating a level of toxicity unparalleled in history one single hour spent on its shoreline would have exposed you to a dose of radiation high enough to kill you yet while karachay was uniquely dangerous its contamination sadly wasn't one off across the mark facility the series of accidents screw-ups and poor decisions resulted in an environmental catastrophe throughout its soviet days it's estimated that maya exposed those living nearby to more than five times the level of radiation expelled by chernobyl unsurprisingly many are still living with the consequences the story of both the world's most dangerous lake and the secret closed city that birthed it this is the tale of carrich a the ussr's other great nuclear disaster not far from the foothills of russia's ural mountains over 1800 kilometers from moscow lies a lake with a deadly secret or maybe that should be lay were you to travel to lake karachay today you'll see little to demonstrate it ever existed just the remnants of a backfilling project that was finally completed in 2015. but not very long ago this now desolate stretch of land was home to a body of water almost shocking in its lethality in 1991 as we already mentioned standing on the shore of this lake for an hour would dose you with enough radiation to kill you it was just one of a litany of disasters produced by the mark facility in the mad dash for the soviet union to get the bomb the tale of this mad dash began not in the thick forest surrounding carriche but nearly six thousand kilometers away above the island of honshu on august 6th 1945 the world watched in oar as a new american superweapon exploded over the city of hiroshima vaporizing tens of thousands among those in awe was 66 year old joseph stalin although they were technically still fighting on the same side stalin was not super thrilled with the americans getting the bomb no sooner had the radioactive dust settled over hiroshima than he was demanding a soviet version to neutralize the new nuclear threat that same year the ussr began secretly building city 40. known today as azersk city 40 didn't originally have a name it was a closed city one never intended to appear on any maps or records instead officials referred to it by the code name chelyabinsk 40 after the nearby city of chelyabinsk some 90 kilometers distant it was here in the city's mayak facility that the soviet a-bomb would be born unsurprisingly this work was carried out in absolute secrecy the specialists brought in by the project's head stalin's notorious sadist and chief leventry barrier were told to come without telling anyone not even close family that's when they were told anything at all some were simply ordered to report to the nearest station then bundled into unmarked cars and whisked away once inside city 40 they were forbidden from leaving or otherwise contacting the outside world for eight years unless of course they wanted to personally explain the mistake to mr barrier as a result the families of city 40's specialized workers spent the best part of a decade thinking they were dead unpleasant as things were for the experts though they had nothing on those doing the grunt work the actual buildings were done by gulag prisoners who were treated exactly as well as you would imagine while this probably sucked for all of them it doubly sucked for those tasked with building the mayak plant itself given berry's primary concern was getting a bomb fast rather than safe people were expected to handle radioactive material without any safety gear like literally they used their bare hands it wouldn't be the last time the mark facility gave someone a nasty dose of radiation poisoning yet life wasn't all relentless grimness in city 40. at a time when the ussr in general was a war shattered famine plagued ruin beria ensured his prize workers got ample rations when it came to build the housing people were given their own spacious apartments miles above the cramped communal conditions endured in most cities the nazis working slaves to death to build v2 rockets this was not instead think of it more as a trade-off for those that did their job beria was willing to give them access to housing health care and education beyond their wildest dreams for those who didn't well there were no shortages of places to dump a body out there in the russian wilderness by the fall of 1948 the first production reactor at bach was at last online and ready it was the start of a nuclear arms race that would nearly destroy the world it was also the start of russia's greatest environmental catastrophe [Music] given that most of them had been forcibly relocated if not outright kidnapped you might expect the scientists at city 40 to have resented their situation but that doesn't seem to have been the case most seem to have been proud to be working at maya calling themselves things like the nuclear shield and the saviors of humanity and maybe it really did feel that way like they were working to stop a power hungry america from laying waste to the entire world ironically the saviors of humanity were already contributing to some pretty huge humanitarian disasters the techa is a minor river that flows past mayak passing through many isolated villages where it's often the only major water source beginning in 1948 the mark facility began dumping its nuclear waste directly into it leading to untold contamination you could call this the first cariche the massive contamination of a body of water that locals relied upon but in the race for the atomic bomb what did a few poison villages really matter that race it finally ended on august 29 1949 that day an atomic device codenamed first lightning known as joe 1 in the west was detonated at the semi-palatant test site in kazakhstan with a yield of around 20 kilotons the bomb was easily equal to the usa's first efforts it vaporized test structures the soviets had built casting a burning light high into the kazakh sky from that point on the short era of u.s nuclear supremacy was over the arms race was here meanwhile the world of city 40 was starting to find its shape as the realities of life in a closed city dawned many were starting to find that it really wasn't so bad unlike the endless gray walls of concrete we might associate with soviet cities city 40 was designed to be beautiful with plenty of open space and parks there was also a culture of intellectual freedom brewing one which must have been intoxicating to those used to stalinism with work as important as nuclear weapons beria had wisely relaxed the state's grip on information the city's scientists could read books and debate ideas that were forbidden in moscow of course that was still the omnipresent secret police but so long as you were doing your work and not spying and not trying to let anyone know about the existence of mayak you were generally left alone it was a model that would soon become common across the ussr the closed city that existed for pursuing secret example which housed the workers at chernobyl would be managed in a similar way and both cities would soon suffer the consequences as the production of weapons-grade material increased the disposal of waste at mac became harder and harder in 1951 it was finally decided that even the ussr couldn't get away with dumping so much poison into the teja river and plans were instead made for a system of reservoirs to act as medium-term storage facilities while waiting for those pools to be dug though mayak would begin dumping in a beautiful nearby lake and we're not giving away any prizes for guessing the name of that lake starting that same year mark began a process that would eventually see 200 million curies of radioactive waste spewed into carrot jay more than enough to either transform you into a superhero or more likely make you cough up blood and then die on agonizing death and all the while the bombs got bigger and bigger by august 1953 the ussr had acquired and tested its first hydrogen bomb two years later moscow was detonating devices in the megaton range come 1961 the soviets were able to detonate the tsar bomber a single device with 10 times more explosive power than every single munition detonated in world war ii combined yet even as the tests got bigger the environment around the mayak facility only got more contaminated before the sar bomber had even been dreamed of this would lead to what was then the worst nuclear disaster in history despite lake carache being slowly filled with enough toxic waste to rival any river in springfield it wasn't the only storage place in the market complex liquid reactor waste was also being kept in giant underground tanks tanks that weren't always kept in the best condition by that we mean it was totally possible for the cooling system in one of those tanks to malfunction and not be noticed for an entire year and this was something of a massive problem because it turns out that keeping nuclear waste cool is pretty important over that year or so the contents of the tank got hotter and hotter thanks to radioactive decay eventually peaking at over 350 degrees celsius as it got hotter the underground tank got more and more volatile until one day the inevitable happened on the 29th of september 1957 the tank exploded with a force of 70 tons of tnt enough to send its one meter thick concrete lid shooting into the air remember in 2007 when the u.s dropped a bomb on afghan insurgents that was so big it was nicknamed the mother of all bombs well the explosion in the mayak tank that day was almost seven times as powerful i'll also mention here that if you'd like to learn more about the mother of all bombs i've got another channel called megaprojects where we did an entire video about it so please do check that out i'll link to it below as well as sending the tank's lid zooming off in the general direction of pluto the blast was enough to hurl a vast cloud of cesium 137 and strontium-90 high into the air on the off chance you're not up on your radioactive isotopes just know that this was very very bad news the deadly plume unleashed by the blast drifted northeast eventually covering an area the size of vermont sadly despite city 40 being remote the surrounding area was not uninhabited over 200 villages and small towns fell in the affected area with as many as a quarter of a million people being exposed to this cloud of death this being the soviet union the authorities were all like evacuat running ways to cry babies here's a bot clean it up while that's a joke it's also close to the truce around the village of kishtim local authorities really did tell civilians to just clean this weird sludge off of their homes without any protective gear being needed as for evacuation only 10 000 people were ever moved out of the disaster zone and even then they were moved out late and the authorities showed clear preference for ethnic russians over any of the other groups within just a few weeks area hospitals were filled with people suffering from radiation sickness today it's still unknown exactly how many people died as a result of what's become known as the kishtim disaster you see this was during the peak of soviet secrecy as britannica's entry puts it hundreds probably died but we have no way of knowing for sure what we do know though is the scale of the ecological disaster two-fifths of as much radioactivity as was later released at chernobyl came spewing out of that tank contaminating some 24 000 square kilometers of land when the world finally found out about the accident the international atomic energy agency classified it as a level six event the only other nuclear disasters to ever rank higher are fukushima and chernobyl many decades later the authorities in maya would say that this was the moment that made them see the light the moment they decided to stop dumping waste into lake karachay fearing another accident but as with so much under the soviet system this was just more misdirection even after contaminating an area bigger than the size of whales they kept right on dumping waste into caracay in no time at all this would lead to yet another lethal accident by the time 1967 dawned lake karachay had been receiving nuclear waste for almost 16 years other reservoirs had been created since dumping began including one that would gain the nickname plutonium lake but carrachae was still the oldest and the most contaminated this was bad enough even during normal weather the shaw was so toxic that you could receive a fatal dose in the time it took to have a picnic but at least everyone knew not to go chill out on karachay's shores they knew not to try sunbathing by the deadly water in abnormal weather such as the weather city 40 suffered in 1967 such knowledge was no help at all it started that winter with an unusually dry start to the year for the locals this was presumably a case of great less snow to soak my leaky communist boats but then that dry winter was followed by a blazing hot summer everywhere the ground turned to mud and cracked parched yellow grass withered into kindling and lakes like carrot jay dried out until there were entire sections without water it was at this point that the problems began all that toxic sludge dumped into carriche hadn't just vanished with the water it had sunk down contaminating the sediment on the lake bed to a depth of 3.5 meters when that sediment was exposed during that brutal summer it dried into very fine dust a very fine dust that was whipped up by winds and sent scattering across the countryside the irradiated particles formed clouds of death clouds of radioactive material that flew over the forests into city 40 out into the villages and contaminated everything that it settled on before the rains returned it's estimated some 63 villagers were caught in the cloud's embrace and a minimum of 41 000 people were affected 41 000 people who breathed in that dust who wiped it from their windows with bare hands never even guessing that it could poison them and give them cancer and just in case you were looking for extra proof that life is hugely unfair some of those people were the survivors of the 1957 disaster we've no proof that any of them subsequently decided to move to a lovely ukrainian town called chernobyl but it would be entirely in keeping with these poor bastards luck if they did in the wake of the killer dust storm of 1967 it was decided that lake karachay couldn't be allowed to remain as it was there was just too much possibility that it could dry out again too much chance it could unleash another radioactive dust storm so in the aftermath of 1967 those in charge of mike turned to conservation by the mid-1980s a new technology had been developed for rendering the lake safe hollow concrete blocks measuring one meter cubed would be placed on the lake bed then filled with rocks and covered with soil to stop the contaminated sediment from escaping unfortunately the technology was only perfected in time for everything to go to hell first in 1986 the world suffered its worst ever nuclear accident when reactor iv melted down at chernobyl incidentally it was because of this meltdown that we learned about the keystream disaster when the ussr submitted a report to the u.n demonstrating it had previous nuclear cleanup experience but it was the second event that would affect lake karachay the most in the late 1980s a wave of revolution began sweeping eastern europe one by one once invincible communist regimes tottered and fell with a resounding crash before long this wave had reached the soviet union by 1991 the entire nation was ready to dissolve sadly post-soviet russia would be a little too busy with economic shocks and major instability to conduct nuclear cleanup operations the result would be a late carriche that soon became even deadlier than ever [Music] in 1991 a pair of reports into the state of the mark site produced some of the grimmest reading in science history not only was mark once one of the most contaminated places in the world half of its dangerous material was contained in a single spot lake karachay a spot that was now drying out and in danger of triggering yet another disaster and carriche was just one of dozens of sites across the former ussr in need of immediate cleanup from the anthrax-laden shores of royal 7 to the big daddy of them all chernobyl yet even among this company karachay stood out as one u.s scientist who advised on the cleanup muse if you went there for an afternoon picnic you'd be dead it's that radioactive cariche would stay that way for the whole of the 90s although the plan to backfill the lake with concrete blocks was technically ongoing the project was too starved of funds and too obscured by the chaos of post-soviet russia all the way into 2004 there's evidence of continued dumping of nuclear waste around the site luckily though a place as dangerous as carriche couldn't be ignored forever in 2008 a new federal program was launched to clean up the world's deadliest lake part funded by the eu in the usa it envisaged a massive operation to have the lake nearly entirely filled in by 2015. it was a complex operation one involving dozens of trucks specially fitted with lead-lined cabins hauling those hollow concrete blocks up to the waters and tipping them in an operation that ultimately cost 263 million dollars but it was also an operation that worked in november 2015 an official ceremony was held to mark the final backfilling of the ussr's nuclear lake a month later carriche was covered by rocks and dirt and vanished from sight of course the nuclear material is still there buried far below and while the former shores are way less dangerous now than they were it still wouldn't be advisable to try sunbathing on them yet the infilling of lake carriche isn't the end of the story not really the residents of city 40 are still there still living in their closed city only now they're dealing with a huge increase in cancers and early deaths in a grim twist of fate they now have another hugely contaminated lake one containing a hundred and twenty million curies of radioactive material less than cariche sure but still enough to cause serious health problems but perhaps those who suffer the most are those living in the nearby villages in 2009 russian authorities finally recognized the victims of the 1957 leak and the deadly 1967 dust storm one village that had suffered badly in both disasters muslim was even compensated by the state each resident would receive either a new home or one million rubles it sounded too good to be true and it was with painful openness the corrupt authorities pocketed most of the cash those who'd chosen the payout were given always nothing those who'd chosen the new home were moved to a brand new village two kilometers away one that sat on land that was equally contaminated that done the old village was raised to the ground those in the new village subsequently received checks to compensate their loss and help them buy medicine the monthly payments amount to fifteen dollars even in rural russia as a laughable sum late carriche may be gone today but its toxic legacy still remains it's a legacy of secrecy of cover-up of dangerous mistakes made at the dawn of the nuclear age but it's also something personal something tens of thousands of russian villagers have to live with each and every day a physical legacy hanging over their lives like a toxic cloud lake karachay may soon fade into memory but for its victims and the victims of all the other accidents at the mayak site its after effects will last a lifetime so i'm not going to ask whether you enjoyed that video but i do hope you found it interesting if you did please do give us a thumbs up below don't forget to subscribe if you're not already thank you for watching

Channel: Geographics

Views: 887,834

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Id: ouiFZrrVKIQ

Length: 19min 33sec (1173 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 23 2020