He has argued that a vast contaminated area exists east of the city of Kyshtym … There is petty cost-cutting, buck-passing, big decisions made by elected officials who don’t fully understand the science. The Colonials strike back! Initially Mayak was dumping high-level radioactive waste into a nearby river, which flowed to the river Ob, flowing farther down to the Arctic Ocean. Change ). When an accident does occur, this same lack of transparency and accountability get in the way of managing the response, and then the public relations when it inevitably becomes a news story. There is a chapter on the Kyshtym disaster of 1957, which is now classified as the third … Because of the high level of radioactivity, the waste was heating itself through decay heat (though a chain reaction was not possible). The alleged Kyshtym disaster has been an intriguing intelligence puzzle for almost 25 years. Specifically, the facility produced plutonium for Soviet nuclear weapons from 19… [11] Most of this contamination settled out near the site of the accident and contributed to the pollution of the Techa River, but a plume containing 2 MCi (80 PBq) of radionuclides spread out over hundreds of kilometers. I thought that was worth exploring a little further. "The Nuclear Disaster They Didn't Want To Tell You About". The incident tells us as much about bad management as it does about nuclear power. People "grew hysterical with fear with the incidence of unknown 'mysterious' diseases breaking out. The fallout of the cloud resulted in a long-term contamination of an area of more than 800 to 20,000 km2 (310 to 7,720 sq mi), depending on what contamination level is considered significant, primarily with caesium-137 and strontium-90. According to Gyorgy,[24] who invoked the Freedom of Information Act to gain access to the relevant Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) files, the CIA had known of the 1957 Mayak accident since 1959, but kept it secret to prevent adverse consequences for the fledgling American nuclear industry. As Levy notes, the actual harm to the public from Windscale was relatively low, but “effects were dramatic in terms of public opinion and the cultural and political discourse around nuclear energy.” In the United States, the Three Mile Island incident also “left a legacy of fear and suspicion out of all proportion to the actual harms that resulted.”. Victims were seen with skin 'sloughing off' their faces, hands, and other exposed parts of their bodies". The alleged Kyshtym disaster has been an intriguing intelligence puzzle for almost 25 years. Known as the Kyshtym Disaster, the incident occurred at Mayak, a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant sequestered in the closed city of Ozyorsk, near the town of Kyshtym. He has argued that a vast contaminated area exists east of the city of Kyshtym … After World War II, the Soviet Union lagged behind the United States in the development of nuclear weapons, so it started a rapid research and development program to produce a sufficient amount of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium. It measured as a Level 6 disaster … Zhores Medvedev, a Soviet dissident, has written numerous journal articles as well as two books on the subject. ( Log Out /  Facilities for monitoring operation of the coolers and the content of the tanks were inadequate. Whistle-blowers aren’t welcome and so nobody takes responsibility. The Kyshtym disaster was a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on 29 September 1957 at Mayak, a plutonium production site for nuclear weapons and nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in the Soviet Union. That’s no fault of Levy’s, as his book doesn’t promise any more than the stories. harvnb error: no target: CITEREFStandring2009 (, harvnb error: no target: CITEREFGusevGusʹkovaMettler2001 (, Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology, "The Kyshtym Disaster: The Largest Nuclear Disaster You've Never Heard Of", https://www.cogentoa.com/article/10.1080/23312009.2018.1450944, "Kyshtym disaster | Causes, Concealment, Revelation, & Facts", "Russian village evacuation as rocket blast sparks radiation fears: Nyonoksa residents asked to leave within a day after last week's explosion that spiked radiation levels up to 16 times", "natural radioactivity exposition is 2,4 mS", International Association for Engineering Geology and the Environment, "Data Analysis and Physicochemical Modeling of the Radiation Accident in the Southern Urals in 1957", "Joint American-Russian Radiation Health Effects Research", United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, "Overview of Dose Assessment Developments and the Health of Riverside Residents Close to the "Mayak" PA Facilities, Russia", International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, "Soviets Tell About Nuclear Plant Disaster; 1957 Reactor Mishap May Be Worst Ever", "The Nuclear Disaster of Kyshtym 1957 and the Politics of the Cold War", Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Focus on the 60th anniversary of the Kyshtym Accident and the Windscale Fire, An Analysis of the alleged Kyshtym Disaster, Lists of nuclear disasters and radioactive incidents, Vulnerability of nuclear plants to attack, Nuclear and radiation accidents and incidents, Nuclear and radiation accidents by death toll, Cancelled nuclear reactors in the United States, Inquiries into uranium mining in Australia, Nuclear and radiation fatalities by country, Nuclear weapons tests of the Soviet Union, Nuclear weapons tests of the United States, 1996 San Juan de Dios radiotherapy accident, 1990 Clinic of Zaragoza radiotherapy accident, Three Mile Island accident health effects, Thor missile launch failures at Johnston Atoll, Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kyshtym_disaster&oldid=1001022193, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from November 2018, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 17 January 2021, at 21:55. 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