- published: 18 Feb 2013
- views: 51663
The Kyshtym disaster was a radiation contamination incident that occurred on 29 September 1957 at Mayak, a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Russia (then a part of the Soviet Union). It measured as a Level 6 disaster on the International Nuclear Event Scale, making it the third most serious nuclear accident ever recorded (after the Chernobyl disaster, and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, both Level 7 on the INES scale). The event occurred in the town of Ozyorsk, a closed city built around the Mayak plant. Since Ozyorsk/Mayak (also known as Chelyabinsk-40 and Chelyabinsk-65) was not marked on maps, the disaster was named after Kyshtym, the nearest known town.
After World War II, the Soviet Union lagged behind the United States in development of nuclear weapons, so it started a rapid research and development program to produce a sufficient amount of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium. The Mayak plant was built in a great hurry between 1945 and 1948. Gaps in Soviet physicists' knowledge about nuclear physics at the made time it difficult to judge the safety of many decisions. Also, environmental concerns were not taken seriously during the early development stage. All six reactors were on Lake Kyzyltash and used an open cycle cooling system, discharging irradiated water directly back into the lake. Initially Mayak was dumping high-level radioactive waste into a nearby river, which was taking waste to the river Ob, flowing further down to the Arctic Ocean. Later on, Lake Karachay was used for open-air storage.
Kyshtym (Russian: Кышты́м) is a town in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, located on the eastern slopes of the south Ural Mountains 90 kilometers (56 mi) northwest of Chelyabinsk, near the town of Ozyorsk. Population: 38,950 (2010 Census preliminary results); 41,929 (2002 Census); 42,852 (1989 Census); 36,000 (1970).
It was established by the Demidovs in 1757 around two factories for production of cast iron and steel.[citation needed] It was granted town status in 1934.[citation needed]
Administratively, along with twelve rural localities, it is incorporated as the Town of Kyshtym—an administrative unit with the status equal to that of the districts.Municipally, the Town of Kyshtym is incorporated as Kyshtymsky Urban Okrug.
Kyshtym is near the Chelyabinsk-40 nuclear complex, also known as "Mayak" ("lighthouse" in Russian), where on September 29, 1957, a violent explosion involving dry nitrate and acetate salts in a waste tank containing highly radioactive waste, contaminated an area of more than 15,000 square kilometers (Ozyorsk was the town built around the Mayak combine, but it was a closed city, which was not marked on maps, thus making Kyshtym the nearest town to the location of the disaster). The explosion resulted from a failure of the cooling system of the tank.
Michio Kaku (加来 道雄, Kaku Michio?, born January 24, 1947) is an American theoretical physicist, the Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics in the City College of New York of City University of New York, a co-founder of string field theory, a futurist, and a "communicator" and "popularizer" of science. He has written several books about physics and related topics; he has made frequent appearances on radio, television, and film; and he writes extensive online blogs and articles. He has written two New York Times best sellers, Physics of the Impossible (2008) and Physics of the Future (2011). He has hosted several TV specials for BBC-TV, the Discovery Channel, and the Science Channel.
Kaku was born in San Jose, California to Japanese immigrant parents. His grandfather came to the United States to take part in the clean-up operation after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake[citation needed]. His father was born in California but was educated in Japan and spoke little English. Both his parents were put in the Tule Lake War Relocation Center, where they met and where his two brothers were born.