After the end of World War II, the allies in the anti-fascist coalition of the United States and the USSR began to establish their orders in the world. Competition gradually turned into a "cold war" that lasted for many years. In both countries there was an active taming of "atomic energy". Many work was carried out quite successfully, but there were also failures. One of them was the accident, which was dubbed "Kyshtym".
Background
After the victory over Germany in 1945, the war continued, Japan resisted. The United States put a full stop by dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The whole world saw how destructive potential atomic weapons have. The Soviet Union could not allow the United States alone to possess such destructive weapons, and a few weeks after the bombing, Stalin ordered that his own bomb be urgently created. A fairly young scientist, Igor Kurchatov, was appointed the development chief. Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria personally supervised the work.
As part of the development of the atomic bomb, many cities in which work began were classified. Chelyabinsk-40 became one of these cities. According to Kurchatov’s order, plant number 817 was later built, later renamed the Mayak plant, and the first nuclear reactor A-1, which the complex’s employees nicknamed Annushka. The launch of the reactor took place already in 1948, and the production of weapons-grade plutonium began.
Background
The company has been successfully operating for nine years. Scientists with their fanatical approach to work very often put themselves and their subordinates at serious risk. The so-called "Kyshtym accident" was preceded by other, minor incidents, from which many employees of the enterprise received a serious dose of radiation. Many simply underestimated the dangers of nuclear energy.
At first, the waste from production simply merged into the river. Later, a method of storage in "banks" was invented. Huge pits with a depth of 10-12 meters housed concrete tanks in which harmful waste was stored. This method was considered quite safe.
Explosion
September 29, 1957 in one of these "cans" there was an explosion. The lid of the vault weighing about 160 tons flew seven meters. At that moment, many residents of nearby villages and Chelyabinsk-40 itself clearly decided that America dropped one of its atomic bombs. In fact, the cooling system failed in the waste storage, which provoked rapid heating and a powerful release of energy.
Radioactive substances rose into the air to a height of more than one kilometer and formed a huge cloud, which later began to settle on the ground for three hundred kilometers in the direction of the wind. Despite the fact that almost 90% of harmful substances fell on the territory of the enterprise, a military town, a prison and small villages were in the infection zone, the area of infection was about 27, 000 square kilometers.
Work on the assessment of the damage caused and reconnaissance of the radiation background on the territory of the plant and beyond began only the next day. The first results in nearby settlements showed that the situation is rather serious. However, the evacuation and elimination of the consequences began only a week after the accident itself. For work, criminals, conscripts, and even local residents were involved. Many of them did not quite understand what they were doing. Most villages were evacuated, buildings demolished, and all things destroyed.
After the incident, Soviet scientists began to develop a new technology for the storage of radioactive waste. The vitrification method began to be used. In this state, they are not subject to chemical reactions and the storage of "vitrified" waste in special tanks is quite safe.
