Mayak

Mayak (Russian: Маяк, "lighthouse") is one of the biggest nuclear facilities in the Russian Federation. Located 150 km south-east of Ekaterinburg between the towns of Kasli and 72 km northwest of Chelyabinsk, the closest city to the nuclear complex is Ozyorsk, the central administrative territorial district. As part of the Russian nuclear weapon program, Mayak was formerly known as Chelyabinsk-40 and later as Chelyabinsk-65.

Mayak is also known as the source of the serious contamination of a huge territory in the Ural area in 1957, which was kept secret by the Soviet regime for about 30 years. Working conditions at Mayak, and a lack of environmental responsibility in the past, led to additional contamination of the surrounding lake district and severe health hazards and accidents. Some areas are still under restricted access because of radiation. In the past 45 years, about half a million people in the region have been irradiated in one or more of the incidents, exposing some of them to more than 20 times the radiation suffered by the Chernobyl disaster victims.

Mayak was the goal of Gary Powers' surveillance flight in May 1960. The most notable accident occurred on 29 September 1957, when the failure of the cooling system for a tank storing tens of thousands of tons of dissolved nuclear waste resulted in a non-nuclear explosion having a force estimated at about 75 tons of TNT (310 gigajoules), which released some 2 million curies of radioactivity over 15,000 sq. miles. "Hundreds of square miles were left barren and unusable for decades and maybe centuries. Hundreds of people died, thousands were injured and surrounding areas were evacuated." This nuclear accident, the Soviet Union's worst before the Chernobyl disaster, is categorised as a level 6 "serious accident" on the 0-7 International Nuclear Events Scale.

Rumours of a nuclear mishap somewhere in the vicinity of Chelyabinsk had long been circulating in the West. That there had been a serious nuclear accident west of the Urals was eventually inferred from research on the effects of radioactivity on plants, animals, and ecosystems, published by Professor Leo Tumerman, former head of the Biophysics Laboratory at the Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow, and associates.

According to Gyorgy, who invoked the Freedom of Information Act to open up the relevant Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) files, the CIA knew of the 1957 Mayak accident all along, but kept it secret to prevent adverse consequences for the fledgling USA nuclear industry. "Ralph Nader surmised that the information had not been released because of the reluctance of the CIA to highlight a nuclear accident in the USSR, that could cause concern among people living near nuclear facilities in the USA."

The Mayak plant is associated with two other major nuclear accidents. The first occurred as a result of heavy rains causing Lake Karachay polluted with radioactive waste to release radioactive material into surrounding waters, and the second occurred in 1967 when wind spread dust from the bottom of Lake Karachay, a dried-up radioactively polluted lake (used as a dumping basin for Mayak's radioactive waste since 1951), over parts of Ozersk; over 400,000 people were irradiated.

See also

Chernobyl disaster

International Nuclear Events Scale

List of civilian nuclear accidents

List of military nuclear accidents

List of nuclear reactors

Nuclear and radiation accidents

Nuclear contamination

Nuclear meltdown

Nuclear safety

Nuclear power

Ozyorsk, Chelyabinsk Oblast

Radiation

Radioactive contamination

Radioactive waste

Reprocessed uranium

Techa the radioactive river

Three Mile Island accident

United States military nuclear incident terminology

Windscale fire

References

External links

"Inside the Zone" by Alexander Zaitchik. The most in-depth recent report on the history of the Mayak plant and its impact on local communities.

Material prepared for the Nuclear Threat Initiative by the Monterey Institute's Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

Chelyabinsk-65 / Ozersk Combine 817 / Production Association Mayak. From GlobalSecurity.org.

On Ozersk and Mayak, from the Ural Press.

Eyewitness accounts of unsafe working conditions at Mayak.

Campaign to clean up Mayak. From Greenpeace web site.

More from Greenpeace

Article from the Russian press

URAL CHERNOBIL: TRAGEDY of TATARS

The book F.Bajramova "The nuclear archipelago or atomic genocide against Tatars" (1st chapter)

Annotated bibliography for the Mayak nuclear complex from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues

A part of the staff at Mayak (From their official homepage)

Coordinates:

Category:Nuclear reprocessing Category:Nuclear accidents Category:Nuclear technology in Russia Category:Radioactive waste Category:Energy in the Soviet Union Category:Disasters in Russia Category:Chelyabinsk Oblast Category:Soviet coverups