Complex Mayak nuclear power

The Complexe nuclear power Mayak is localized between the towns of Kasli and Kyshtym (also transliterated by Kishtym or Kishtim), to 150 km in the north of the town of Tcheliabinsk (or Chelyabinsk) in Russia. The complex is in the central territorial administrative unit of Ozersk, named Tchelyabinsk-40 then Tchelyabinsk-65, which is located in the oblast Tchelyabinsk.

The Race with the atomic bomb in Russia

At the end of the second world war, the United States shows their technological advance in the field of the nuclear weapons with the explosions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the USSR, the beginning of the cold war is marked by a race with the nuclear armament. The nuclear complex Mayak is built in this context between 1945 and 1948, in all haste and in the greatest secrecy.

In the beginning, the complex militaro-industrialist is conceived in order to manufacture and refine the Plutonium for the nuclear warheads. The first plutonium engine is put in construction in January 1947. The first nuclear test of the USSR proceeds in September 1949, that is to say less than 3 years later. On the whole, five nuclear reactors with plutonium vocation are built on the site. Later, the complex is arranged in nuclear factory of Retraitement for irradiated fuel of the engines and military plutonium resulting from the dismantling of the nuclear arsenal. In 2006, the produced site of the Tritium and radioisotopes but not of plutonium. The possibility of a transition from the complex towards business services from reprocessing for foreign irradiated fuel raises controversies.

In the first years of exploitation, the installations of the complex slacken broad quantities of radioactive wastes in several small lakes of the surroundings and the Techa river which ends in the river Ob. The consequences of these rejections are still not given. It is however not disputed that many employees of the site in years 1950 and 1960 died of the consequences of an exposure to the ionizing rays. In 2006, according to inhabitants of Ozersk, there is no more risk of irradiation because the transmitters of ionizing rays underwent their radioactive decrease. However, the administration of Mayak was criticized on several occasions for doubtful environmental practices.

The accident of 1957

The work conditions with Mayak result in important health hazards and many accidents.

A very serious Nuclear accident occurred on September 29th, 1957. Tanks of radioactive waste buried undergo a breakdown of the cooling system. The differential evaporation of various compounds leads to a powerful chemical explosion (non-nuclear) of an energy equivalent to 75 tons of TNT (310 GJ). Following this explosion, radioelements are spread with an activity estimated at 740 peta bq. The explosion projected with more un km of altitude approximately 2 million curies of radioactive products, and nearly ten times more in the environment of the installation, is approximately half of the rejected quantities with Tchernobyl. At least 200 people die, 10.000 people are evacuated and 470.000 people are exposed to radiations. This nuclear accident, worst of the USSR after the Catastrophe of Tchernobyl, is classified on level 6 of the scale INNATE. The Soviet mode having maintained the secret defense on this accident, the first information will be revealed only as from 1976 by the Russian biologist Jaurès Medvedev, then immigrant in England.

According to Gyorgy (1979: 128), who invoked the Freedom off Information Act to open up the depending Central Intelligence Agency (the CIA) files, the CIA knew off the 1957 Mayak accident all along, goal kept it secret to prevent unfavourable consequences for the fledgling the USA nuclear industry. " Ralph Nader surmised that the information had not been released because off the reluctance off the CIA to highlight has nuclear accident in the USSR, that could causes concern among people living room near nuclear facilities in the USA" (Pollock 1978:9). Only in 1992, shortly after the fall off the USSR, did the Russians officially acknowledge the accident. -->

Two other accidents of great width are ascribable with the Mayak complex:

of the rains of strong intensities makes overflow a lake radiocontaminé in the Techa river;
a storm raises radioactive dusts of a drained lake and spreads them in Ozersk.

In the daily newspaper Release of August 24th, 2000, Igor Forofontov of Greenpeace Russia affirms that “the radioactive materials go up on the surface with the gushing of subterranean water”.

See too

Lake nuclear Karachay
Reprocessing

References

Gyorgy, A. et al., 1979. No Nukes: Everyone' S Guides to Nuclear Power . South End Near.
Pollock, Richard, 1978. " Soviets Experiment Nuclear Accident, " Critical Farmhouse Newspaper 3 : are born.
Colfer, Eoin, 2002. " Artemis Fowl: The Artic, Inccident"

External bonds

Tcheliabinsk-40 leaves forty - Le Monde, September 26th, 1990
LESSONS OF KYCHTYM - humanity, September 28th, 1990
(in) has carryforward one the 1957 accident and one endemic radioactive pollution At Mayak.
(in) Material prepared for the Nuclear Threat Initiative by the Monterey Institute' S Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
(in) Ozersk Extensive discussion by the Bellona Foundation.
(in) Chelyabinsk-65/Ozersk Combines 817/Production Mayak Association. From GlobalSecurity.org.
(in) One Ozersk and Mayak, from the Ural Near.
(in) Eyewitness accounts off unsafe working conditions At Mayak.
(in) Campaign to clean up Mayak. From Greenpeace web site.
(in) Recent Greenpeace action.
(in) More from Greenpeace
(in) Article from the Russian close
(in) More articles from Russian close

Simple: Mayak accident