Tragedy of which no one knew
Radioactive elements of natural origin are common in nature, they surround us, are in our organisms. Most of them were formed millions of years ago. What they emit is completely safe for health and, according to scientists, played a large role in the origin of life on the planet. But there are also radioactive elements of a completely different type ...Production Association "Mayak", located near the city of Ozersk, has long been among the closed, classified enterprises of Russia. Not so long ago, the veil of secrecy was slightly lifted, promulgating a number of documents about its activities. At the same time, of course, nothing was mentioned about the technologies used and methods of work. But how did it all begin?
In the middle of the twentieth century, namely in the 1946 year, a hundred kilometers from Chelyabinsk near the town of Kyshtym, the construction of an industrial atomic reactor began. Together with this, a radiochemical plant was built with the colorful name “Mayak”. From the very beginning, it was a very classified object of the Ministry of the Interior. Local residents are not particularly worried about the progress of construction. The main workers were more than thirty thousand prisoners, plus three regiments of the military construction department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
In the course of the work, numerous rules for the construction of such facilities were violated. The management did not care about the environment and the health of the people living nearby. It was only important to fulfill the order of the state. By the completion of the construction arrived academic Kurchatov himself, who personally gave instructions for filling the reactor with uranium.
As a result, complex chemical production was created on the territory of the enterprise. In the course of his work, a considerable amount of radioactive waste was produced in solid and liquid state. They contained a huge number of strontium, uranium, plutonium, cesium and some other radioactive elements. The reactor began operating in June 1948 of the year, but immediately after the launch, an accident struck. An uncontrolled automatic release of radioactive elements into the atmosphere occurred. In subsequent years, this happened quite often, to the tragedy of 1957, the territory around the Mayak plant was already well infected.
According to archival documents, emergencies at Mayak took place regularly. There is a case when the chief director of "Mayak" went hunting. Driving near the dam, which was holding back water with radiation waste, he noticed that it was very washed out and a breakthrough was about to happen. People were urgently thrown in for repairs, only due to the occasion they managed to prevent a tragedy.
Curiously, even before the launch of “Mayak”, top management allowed for the likelihood of accidents involving human casualties, suggesting that the authorities would be ready for this at “places”. Scenarios of accidents along with the dead in them were planned and miscalculated in advance, for example, how many victims per quarter, and how many per year. Of course, all the calculations were informal and behind closed doors. Obviously, it was decided in advance that the blame for such incidents would be borne by the workers. And it is unlikely that the liquidators of the consequences of these accidents and the civilian population made it to the planned lists of victims.
At the very beginning, the radioactive waste was sent straight to the Techa River, on which the plant was built. But as soon as people who lived in houses on both banks of the river began to die, it was decided to pour only low-level waste into it. Medium-active began to dispose of in another reservoir - Lake Karachay. But most of the waste was highly active. They were stored in special stainless steel tanks - "banks", which were located in underground concrete storage facilities. These tanks were very hot due to the activity of radioactive materials placed inside them. In order to avoid overheating and explosion, they were cooled with water. Each “bank” had its own cooling system, combined with a content status monitoring system.
From a document signed by Beria himself and published in the 1949 year: “In a system that monitors the release of radioactive waste, it is necessary to remove all flow meters and radiometers. According to their testimony, any specialist will be able to easily determine the capacity of the plant. "
Despite the fact that the equipment was liquidated, it was impossible to do without measuring the level of radioactivity. Therefore, they regularly took water from the Techa River. The results of measurements and studies were recorded in the relevant journals. Today, for the rest of the monitoring data, the researchers establish the true numbers and values of many classified indicators.
In the fifties, internal radiation was considered the most terrible radiation, only later it turned out that it was necessary to be afraid of directly external, most powerful gamma radiation. At the same time, the word “radiation” was forbidden even to be uttered, everything connected with it was strictly forbidden. Even the first persons of the region avoided this term. When mutated (too large and fat) fish began to appear in the Techa River, the regional party committee ordered it to be sent to its canteen. More than two years, the regional "tip" fed on radioactive fish. Even if the party members did not know anything, then what to talk about ordinary people.
As it turned out, mutations occurred not only with fish. What is worth alone story with the so-called "Kyshtym humanoid." He was found in the village of Kaolin, located near Kyshtym, that is, in the area of "Mayak". Genetic analysis showed: “By the blood stains, a human DNA is established on a tissue sample. According to the analysis, this is a prematurely born baby with numerous physical disabilities. ” The alien version had no reason, but many questions still remained, for example, as a result of which was this creature born? Today the answer, of course, is obvious. Mutant children are born in those places today. Especially for them in the Chelyabinsk region created two boarding schools.
Let us cite some excerpts from secret documents related to the Mayak production association: “It is strictly forbidden to hand over agricultural products contaminated with radioactive substances for sale or send them to the nearest areas for export. The sale of meat obtained in the sanitary security zone should be sold only in the Chelyabinsk region. It is forbidden to ship bones from Kyshtymsky and Chelyabinsk meat processing plants for export. ”
And here is another interesting indication: "All medical records, together with information about the incidence and contagion of the inhabitants of this area, including the names of radioactive substances and radiation doses that cause radiation sickness, as well as the data of all tests for the presence of radioactive substances are secret documents."
And here is another interesting indication: "All medical records, together with information about the incidence and contagion of the inhabitants of this area, including the names of radioactive substances and radiation doses that cause radiation sickness, as well as the data of all tests for the presence of radioactive substances are secret documents."
14 May 1955, a special team of the USSR Ministry of Health arrived in Chelyabinsk to fulfill the special task of the Council of Ministers. The team conducted a medical examination of people in Brodokalmaksky, Argayashsky and Kunashaksky areas.
By the fall of 1957, many measuring instruments, together with the rest of the surveillance system borrowed from the chemical industry, had become unusable. Due to the high level of radioactivity in the cable storage corridors, work on their repair was not carried out in a timely manner. At the end of September of the same year a breakdown in the cooling system occurred on one of the waste containers. To top it off, there was a failure in the management system. Workers who made a detour on the day of the accident found that the tank was warming up a lot. Unfortunately, it was already too late; they did not have time to tell the authorities anything. "Bank" exploded.
The complex, where the exploding container was located, was an underground concrete structure with cells for twenty similar “cans” located at a depth of just over eight meters. The explosion was so strong that it completely destroyed the container made of stainless steel, tore off and threw the concrete slab over twenty meters away. Most of the content of the waste container was released to the environment.
Approximately twenty million curies of radioactive compounds were released into the atmosphere. About 90% of them settled in the territory of the plant. The resulting radioactive cloud of solid and liquid aerosols was raised by an explosion to a height of about one and a half kilometers. The wind blowing from the southwest that day blew aerosols at a speed of 10 meters per second. Five hours after the accident, the radioactive cloud traveled a distance of one hundred kilometers, and after ten hours the radioactive trace completely took shape. A couple of millions of curies, soaked into the ground, created contaminated territory, which stretched for about 350 kilometers towards the northeast of the plant. There was not enough radiation at all to get to Tyumen. Mostly the width of the track reached thirty to fifty kilometers. The boundaries of the pollution zones covered an area of twenty three thousand square kilometers.
Radioactive contamination from the September 29 explosion 1957 y. (The density of pollution is given for strontium-90, CI / km2)
Over time, there was a "blurring" of the original boundaries due to the transfer of radionuclides by the wind. This territory was given the name EURT (East Ural radioactive trace). The main, most polluted part of it, covering about seven hundred square kilometers, acquired the status of a state reserve of the Eastern Urals. The zone of the accident affected the territory of three regions - Sverdlovsk, Tyumen and Chelyabinsk with a population of more than 250 thousand people living in 217 settlements. The result of the accident could have been completely different if the wind were blowing in a different direction. In this case, Yekaterinburg or Chelyabinsk would be seriously infected. But by luck, EURT affected only the countryside.
To date, identified the main causes of the tragic consequences of the release of radiation substances. The decisive role was played by the regime of complete secrecy, because the local residents were not even informed about the terrible danger hanging over them. To eliminate the effects of the release, it took the efforts of hundreds of thousands of people. It was necessary to clear the territory of the Mayak industrial site and stop any economic work in the contaminated area. People were sent from Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg and other nearby cities. Nobody warned them about the danger. Whole military units were mobilized to surround the contaminated area. Everything was under the strictest secret, the soldiers were forbidden to say where they were. Teenagers from the villages were sent to bury the radioactive crop with their bare hands. Among other creative horrors, there are undeniable facts that the management of the plant used even pregnant women for work. The consequences were not long in coming — mortality rose sharply throughout the contaminated area, people died out with their entire families, freaks were born.
From the story of the accident liquidator's daughter:
“Dad was seventeen at the time, he studied at a technical school in Yekaterinburg. September 30 57 year, their entire group was removed from classes, put in trucks and taken to the "Lighthouse". About radiation they did not say anything. They worked whole days. No one used the issued individual dosimeters, as they strictly punished for exceeding the dose. Twenty-six years later, he died of cancer. Our family was told that it is not from radiation. Grandma also took part in the elimination and died of cancer after eight years. ”
“Dad was seventeen at the time, he studied at a technical school in Yekaterinburg. September 30 57 year, their entire group was removed from classes, put in trucks and taken to the "Lighthouse". About radiation they did not say anything. They worked whole days. No one used the issued individual dosimeters, as they strictly punished for exceeding the dose. Twenty-six years later, he died of cancer. Our family was told that it is not from radiation. Grandma also took part in the elimination and died of cancer after eight years. ”
After the accident on “Mayak” of 1957, only twenty-three villages were liquidated. Buildings, livestock, even agricultural equipment in them were destroyed. The animals were buried in burial grounds in a specially designated area, fenced with signs of radiation and barbed wire. But today these burial grounds are abandoned and forgotten. They are not protected, no analysis of groundwater and soil is not carried out. In addition, there are many spontaneous, not marked on the ground cemeteries of livestock, because in the designated areas there was too little space. All this will be a danger to people for many tens of thousands of years.
According to the resident of the village Tatarskaya Karabolka:
“Once we were gathered at school, saying that it is necessary to harvest. Then I was only nine years old, and I did not understand why we were being forced to bury him. Policemen stood nearby and guarded or guarded us. Today, many of my class have already died of cancer. ”
“Once we were gathered at school, saying that it is necessary to harvest. Then I was only nine years old, and I did not understand why we were being forced to bury him. Policemen stood nearby and guarded or guarded us. Today, many of my class have already died of cancer. ”
In the places of the East-Ural radioactive trace, to this day, huge and beautiful mushrooms grow that emit radiation. However, locals rarely pay attention to signs prohibiting picking berries and mushrooms. For them, people from poor Bashkir villages, collecting gifts of nature from polluted territories with subsequent sale is substantial financial support.
According to the story of a military man: “I served as a soldier in the Chelyabinsk-40 zone. When transporting unknown cargoes in the carriages, the soldiers stood at the post until they began to bleed from the nose. At the sites we were behind a two-meter lead wall, but this did not save. During demobilization, everyone signed the non-disclosure. Today, of all those called up to me in this world, only three people with disabilities remain. ”
The main part of the settlements that suffered from the accident at “Mayak” are villages. Many of them appeared more than three hundred years ago. Before the construction of a nuclear waste processing facility, most villages were rich and affluent. Today, their population has declined tenfold. To survive, residents have to farm in contaminated areas. In the rivers contaminated with radioactive waste, they water the cattle, bathe and fish. Most of the radiation entering the body of people in these places is milk and meat of birds and domestic animals, as well as drinking water.
In spring, during the flood, the Techa River floods the fields. The remaining radioactive sludge after leaving the water becomes fertilizer for crops. Livestocks of local residents graze on the growing radioactive meadows. Monetary compensation for existence in a radioactive area is negligible. With this money you cannot afford to buy the necessary medicines or go to Chelyabinsk to conduct an expensive examination. The ability to get at least some compensation from the damage in accordance with our legislation is zero.
The long-suffering village of Muslyumovo is one of the four residential centers that are still located on the River Teche. In this place, only those who lived near the water were relocated, forbidding others to approach the river. Most of the residents of Muslyumovo, including children, suffer from radiation sickness. For many years, nuclear scientists pretended that it was safe to be in this village, if you “do not swim and do not walk in the river, do not drink water from it, and don’t fish”.
From the recollections of a resident of the village of Muslyumovo: “The main phenomenon of childhood, closely connected with the river, is barbed wire. When I first saw another river in a neighboring village, I was very surprised by the absence of obstacles. There you could easily approach the water. We looked at our river only through the wire. Parents did not let us to the Techa, in a whisper saying that the river is “atomic”.
In 1959, a secret order appeared that, due to the radiation contamination of the locality of the inhabitants of the village of Tatar Karabolka, it was urgently necessary to relocate. A lot of money was allocated for this - about eighty million rubles. The name of the village disappeared from geographical maps, but people remained. They learned about the accident and radiation only thirty-five years later. Before 1993, no one, not even the doctors, told them about the true causes of the same diseases and frequent incomprehensible deaths. More than half of women of childbearing age are barren. Most families have children with developmental disabilities.
For more than fifty years, Minatom and the Ministry of Health, together with the top leadership of our country, have conducted a long experiment on the inhabitants of poisoned settlements. They could see the effect of radiation on pregnant women and their children, on the health of people and animals in general, on life expectancy.
The report of the Ministry of Health in the village of Muslyumovo states: “The results of long-term observation are of global importance, allowing to evaluate the carcinogenic and genetic consequences of permanent human exposure. The fruits of observations can be the basis for establishing new values of radiation doses for personnel and the public. ”
Fifty-five years have passed since the disaster. Mayak is still functioning, accepting waste in the form of spent nuclear fuel from various Russian nuclear power plants and nuclear submarines. At the moment you read these lines, the company processes tons of radioactive slags.
Rosatom recently announced that the radiation background of the city of Ozersk is five times lower than, for example, in St. Petersburg or Chelyabinsk. At the same time, it was decided to fill Karachay Lake to the state of a “green lawn”, since it accumulated more 120 million curie of radioactive cesium and strontium. However, this does not solve the problem, because there is a gradual radioactive contamination of groundwater.
In the nineties alone, more than twenty accidents and incidents of varying degrees of severity occurred at the state-owned enterprise Mayak. Many workers were exposed, some died on the spot. Conclusions leadership, unfortunately, are not done. And this is the worst, since the tragedy of 1957 of the year can always be repeated ....
Kuzkina mother: "Nuclear autumn fifty-seventh"
The first major radiation accident occurred in the Chelyabinsk region at the Mayak nuclear plant 29 September 1957. The emission of radiation in the accident 1957 of the year is estimated at 20 million Curie. Chernobyl Discharge - Curie Millions 50. Sources of radiation were different: in Chernobyl - a nuclear power reactor, at Mayak - a container with radioactive waste. But the consequences of these two catastrophes are similar - hundreds of thousands of people exposed to radiation, tens of thousands of square kilometers of contaminated territory, the sufferings of environmental refugees, the heroism of the liquidators.
The first major radiation accident occurred in the Chelyabinsk region at the Mayak nuclear plant 29 September 1957. The emission of radiation in the accident 1957 of the year is estimated at 20 million Curie. Chernobyl Discharge - Curie Millions 50. Sources of radiation were different: in Chernobyl - a nuclear power reactor, at Mayak - a container with radioactive waste. But the consequences of these two catastrophes are similar - hundreds of thousands of people exposed to radiation, tens of thousands of square kilometers of contaminated territory, the sufferings of environmental refugees, the heroism of the liquidators.
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