Nuclear accident at the Mayak plant or the Kyshtym tragedy. Kyshtym tragedy

Background. "Kyshtym accident"- it was the very first man-made emergency in the USSR related to radiation. The accident occurred on September 29, 1957 at the Mayak chemical plant. The chemical plant was located in the then closed city of Chelyabinsk-40. Then this city was renamed Ozyorsk. The accident was called Kyshtym due to the fact that the city of Ozyorsk (Chelyabinsk-40) was strictly classified and could not be found on any map of the country until 1990. And Kyshtym is the closest city to it.

For a long time, nothing was reported about this accident in the Soviet Union. The official authorities carefully concealed information from the population of the country and the inhabitants of the Ural region, who found themselves in the zone of the strongest radioactive contamination. However, it was not possible to completely hide the accident in 1957, and even this became impossible due to the huge area of ​​​​radiation contamination, as well as the involvement of a large number of people in the process of post-accident work, who later dispersed throughout the territory of the USSR.

You can learn more about the accident on the Internet - there are many materials that tell in great detail about the scale of the incident and the aftermath. We will only provide data on the contamination of the territory - for the information of vacationers in the Chelyabinsk region.

East Ural Reserve. On April 29, 1966, the East Ural Reserve was organized in the EURT zone, which is located in the Kunashaksky and Kasli regions. The reserve covers an area of ​​about 16.6 thousand hectares. The purpose of the creation of this reserve is to conduct comprehensive research on radioecology, as well as to solve the problems of restoring flora and fauna within the territory of radioactive contamination.

In our time, after more than forty years since the beginning of observations, a lot of information has already been accumulated on the processes that occur in living organisms under conditions of constant exposure to radiation. For example, since the day of the accident, more than 200 generations of voles have already changed in the reserve, and scientists are constantly monitoring them.

Over the past years, the radioactive background in the zone EURS decreased significantly, but has not yet returned to normal levels. In addition, the reserve also performs a conservation function - on its territory, it can be said that the reference community of the Trans-Ural forest-steppe has already been restored and is being preserved. In addition, poachers are unlikely to turn up there!

The Mayak chemical plant (Combine No. 817), located in the city of Ozersk (Chelyabinsk region, Russian Federation), or Chelyabinsk-40 (1948-1966), or Chelyabinsk-65 (1966-1994), or Sorokovka (as the city was called by its inhabitants), became widely known in the USSR only in 1989. Before that, only a few knew about him. Especially about what happened at this plant on September 29, 1957: one of the biggest nuclear disasters in the history of mankind. And if every schoolboy and resident of the country knows about the events at the fourth power unit at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl on April 26, 1986, then only a few know about the September 1957 events at a secret chemical plant in the Ural Mountains.

There are many resources on the Internet where this disaster is described in detail, including on Wikipedia and on the seashore. So I do not pretend to the uniqueness of the material, but simply state some facts about the terrible "Kyshtym tragedy" or the so-called "Ural Chernobyl". In fact, the most frequently mentioned name of the accident came from the name of the settlement Kyshtym, which is located several tens of kilometers from the place of the tragedy, and at the time of the accident was the nearest city MARKED on the maps. The chemical plant itself and its satellite city of Ozersk (Chelyabinsk-40) were secret and were not marked on the maps of the USSR. So, in principle, it happened all the time in the Soviet Union. For example, the name of the Baikonur cosmodrome: the settlement with the same name was located at a considerable distance from it, and there were cities and villages much closer to the cosmodrome itself. But the influence of the Cold War, the eternal attempts to confuse and hide information from opponents and American spies, did their job.

Combine "Mayak"

When the US military used atomic bombs in Japan on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the USSR realized how decisive it could be to influence other countries through nuclear weapons. It was decided to start research in this area in order to create "their own" unique bomb. And after a few years, the nuclear program became No. 1 in the country. After the end of World War II, in the USSR, in the Ural mountains, at a distance of about 100 kilometers from Chelyabinsk, they began to build chemical production. The plant was named "Mayak". The plant and its satellite city were built with ordinary Soviet means and methods practiced in those years. In particular, the "voluntary" labor of Komsomol "biorobots" was used, the recruitment of qualified engineers throughout the country who could not voluntarily refuse a "business trip" to Kyshtym, increased secrecy and, which is unimaginable for foreigners, the labor of prisoners of labor camps in ABSOLUTELY SECRET facility. The scientific director of the project was Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov, later known as the "father" of the Soviet nuclear bomb.

In the course of work on the manufacture of atomic weapons, neither the environment nor the health of people was taken care of. For the manufacture of a charge for a bomb, this chemical plant was launched, where not only uranium and plutonium were obtained, but also a huge amount of liquid and solid nuclear waste that arose during the separation of nuclear elements. This waste contained a huge amount of radioactive residues of cesium, uranium, strontium, plutonium and other elements. Initially, the entire production cycle was single-circuit, i.e. all waste and coolants after the production cycle were poured directly into the environment: into the Techa River near the plant. Soon, people began to get sick and die in villages and villages on the banks of the river, and then a “decision” was made to pour only low-level waste into the river. Note that the Techa River is a tributary of the Ob, which flows into Arctic Ocean. And the consequences of the discharge of radioactive waste from Mayak were also found in the ocean. Medium-level waste began to be poured into the drainless lake Karachay, and high-level waste was disposed of in special stainless steel containers located in special concrete storage facilities. The contents of these containers were constantly heated due to the activity of radioactive materials, therefore, in order to prevent an explosion and cool the contents, it was necessary to take measures to cool and control the state of these industrial radioactive waste.

Leaks of "precious" radioactive material occurred in the production itself. Komsomol "biorobots" with buckets and sponges, as well as prisoners, were used to collect them. The health of permanent workers was also not much of a concern, since the effects of radiation were not yet fully known in those years, especially its effects in the long term. They feared only an instant threat. According to eyewitnesses, one of the indicators for "sending" a short-term sick leave was a constant bleeding from the nose or hair loss. Technologies related to nuclear elements were also imperfect in the late 1950s. So in the production process, ordinary felt seals were used in the valves, which constantly leaked and corroded from radioactive substances. Ordinary glass was used for control lenses, which burst upon contact with active substances. Correspondingly, pipes flowed, glasses burst, wiring sparked, dust and radioactive substances were constantly carried around the plant. But the production had to work around the clock, so "someone" had to constantly repair, restore, remake, refine, clean it all. As a result, many thousands of workers died from radiation sickness, some from cancer ...

1957 accident

September 29, 1957 at 16:22 there was an explosion of a container with a volume of 300 cubic meters, which contained about 80 cubic meters of highly radioactive waste. According to one of the official versions of the cause of the explosion, is the failure of the cooling system and, as a result, the heating and subsequent detonation of the container. According to another version, a solution containing plutonium accidentally got into the waste, the interaction of which with the waste released a large amount of energy and led to an explosion. From the materials of the investigation, the official cause of the accident is: one of the storage tanks for radioactive waste, with a volume of 300 cubic meters, led to the self-heating of 70-80 tons of high-level waste stored there, mainly in the form of nitrate-acetate compounds. Evaporation of water, drying the residue and heating it to a temperature of 330 - 350 degrees led September 29, 1957 at 16:00 local time to the explosion of the contents of the tank. The power of an explosion similar to a powder charge explosion is estimated at 70-100 tons of trinitrotoluene. An independent investigation of the accident has not been carried out to date, and some scientists believe that it was a nuclear explosion that occurred at the plant as a result of a spontaneous reaction (version with plutonium). Until now, technical and chemical reports of investigations of this accident have not been published.

The power of the explosion is estimated at 70-100 tons of TNT (the bomb dropped on Nagasaki was up to 18,000 tons). The directly exploded waste container was located in a special ditch more than 8 meters deep, where there were a total of 20 such containers. The container was destroyed concrete floor 1 meter thick and weighing about 160 tons, located above this moat, was thrown aside by 25 meters. About 20 million curies of radioactive substances were released into the environment (in the explosion at Chernobyl - about 380 million curies, in the explosion at Fukushima-1 - 5-10 million curies). About 2 million curies of emissions formed a cloud in the atmosphere at a height of 1-2 km from the surface, from which radioactive fallout fell over a distance of 300-350 km in a northeast direction over the next 10-11 hours.

To eliminate the consequences of the accident, in fact, in order to wash away radioactive substances with water, the efforts of hundreds of thousands of people were required at the industrial sites of the Mayak chemical plant. From nearby cities, including Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk, young men and women were mobilized to eliminate the consequences of the accident, who were not warned about where they were going and about the danger of radiation. They also brought whole parts of the military, parties of prisoners. Everyone was strictly forbidden to say where they were, what they did. Village children aged 7-13 were sent to bury the radioactive crop. To eliminate the consequences, the labor of pregnant women was also used. As a result, in the Chelyabinsk region and directly in the city of Ozersk, the mortality rate after the accident increased significantly, people died right at work, children were born with genetic abnormalities, entire families died out ... The area of ​​direct pollution affected at least 217 settlements with a population of at least 272,000 people in the Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk and Tyumen regions. The city of Ozersk itself was not affected, but about 90% of the waste fell directly on the territory of the chemical plant. Further, these wastes were actively "brought" into the city on the shoes, clothes and wheels of the liquidators' cars.

During the liquidation of the consequences of the accident, 27 villages with a population of 10 to 12 thousand people were resettled. Buildings, property, livestock and crops were destroyed. By decision of the government of the USSR, in order to prevent the spread of pollution in 1959, a special sanitary-protected zone was created in this area, where any kind of economic activity. However, according to information from some sources, some villages and farms at an equidistant distance remained in this territory for special studies of the effects of radiation on people and animals. Since 1968, the East Ural State Reserve has been formed on this territory, which is now referred to as the East Ural Radioactive Trace (EURS). The area of ​​this reserve was originally about 27,000 square meters, however, due to the constant “dispersion” of radiation by the wind, the area of ​​this EURT, albeit slightly, is still increasing.

Directly mutants and various "freaks", as well as in the territory near Chernobyl, are absent. A lot of wild, fearless animals run around this territory, including roe deer and deer. There are practically no coniferous trees, especially characteristic for these latitudes of pine. This is due to the fact that most of the radiation accumulates in plants in leaves and needles, and if deciduous trees annually shed their leaves, then conifers cannot do this. As a result, the needles turn yellow and the tree dies.

Conclusion

Information about the disaster was hidden from the population of the country. Even special measures were taken to misinform the population: they talked about the reflection of a special aurora. Distorted facts about the accident were constantly described in the Western press and other sources, since no one really knew about real facts about this disaster. It became known to the general public only at the very end of the 1980s. In many ways, only after the accident on Chernobyl nuclear power plant the government of the USSR realized that it was possible to “tell” about the accident at the Mayak plant. As a result of the accident, there were victims, and resettled, and heroic liquidators of the consequences of the disaster. The latter, before the declassification of the details of the accident, did not have any rights and benefits at all. No one, I think, will fully know how many people died as a result of this accident, especially since almost 55 years have passed since this terrible event. It is not known how many of the tens of thousands of liquidators of the accident died in subsequent years. The consequences of environmental pollution will haunt both residents of nearby areas and the descendants of resettled residents for a long time to come. The Mayak plant, already as the Mayak Production Association, is still functioning. The association is one of the largest Russian centers for the processing of radioactive metals. Mayak serves Beloyarsk, Kola and Novovoronezh nuclear power plants, processes nuclear fuel from nuclear submarines and icebreakers.

Radioactive waste continues to be poured into Lake Karachay, the water heats up, evaporates, dust from harmful substances carried by the wind across the Chelyabinsk region ...

On September 29, 1957, the world's first radiation disaster occurred in the closed city of nuclear scientists Chelyabinsk-40 (now Ozersk). At the Mayak plant, an enterprise that produces components of nuclear weapons, a container with radioactive waste exploded. As a result of the explosion, about 20 million curies of radioactive substances were thrown into the air, picked up by a strong southwest wind, they scattered through the surrounding forests, fields and lakes. The total area of ​​infection amounted to almost 20 thousand square kilometers and is known as EURT - the East Ural radioactive trace ...

KYSHTYM-57

Until recently, outrageously little was known about the explosion at the Mayak plant. Information was hidden from the public. The very fact of the accident in the USSR was recognized only in July 1989 at a session of the Supreme Council. The reasons for the silence are clear: the government tried to prevent panic among the civilian population and, perhaps more importantly for the top, to avoid a resonance in the world and a blow to the image of the then superpower.

For many years, the incident at Mayak was generally called the Kyshtym accident, or simply Kyshtym-57, because this particular city was the closest neighbor of the secret and closed "atomic heart of the Union."

Chelyabinsk-40 was not marked on the maps, because since the 1950s, plutonium for our atomic bombs has been produced here. The conditions in which these works were carried out, the imperfection of technology and lack of experience significantly increased the risks of emergency situations, but there was no choice. The United States already possessed nuclear weapons, and after "human tests" in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they calculated how many bombs would be needed to destroy the USSR.

It was impossible to delay. By order of Stalin, on August 20, 1945, a committee on atomic energy was created, headed by L. Beria. Enormous human resources- thousands of scientists and engineers, tens of thousands of soldiers, workers and prisoners. According to Western experts, the Soviet Union could develop its own nuclear weapons no earlier than 1956. But, fortunately for us, it appeared much faster, mixing plans for a preventive nuclear strike on the USSR. On August 29, 1949, the first Soviet nuclear explosion was carried out at the Semipalatinsk test site, which confirmed the unconditional success of all Soviet science.

"RESERVED" LAND

Few people know, but the East Ural Radioactive Trace (EURS) is actually the correct name... the East Ural State Reserve. VUGZ was founded in 1966. It is located on the most contaminated territories after the Mayak explosion and covers an area of ​​16,616 hectares. From north to south, the reserve stretches for 24 kilometers, and from west to east for 9 kilometers. The total length along the perimeter is 90 kilometers.

Currently, the reserve is under the control of the Rosatom corporation, whose employees regularly conduct radiation and radioecological monitoring. The main interest of scientists is the effect of radiation on living organisms, the environment and the process of adaptation in conditions of high contamination of the area. Surprisingly, representatives of the animal world quickly adapted to a level of radiation dangerous even for humans and now freely live in this closed zone isolated from people.

Yes, it will not be possible to freely enter the territory of the reserve. Administratively, VUGZ belongs to the Mayak plant and is regularly patrolled by the police of Ozersk and the village of Metlino. There are four stationary round-the-clock security posts along the perimeter of the reserve, and all "nature lovers" detained on the territory and not having a special permit are mercilessly fined.

However, there are still enough people who want to tickle their nerves, being in this kind of exclusion zone. Rusted signs with a radioactive shamrock and warning signs only spur the interest of extreme people who are eager, for example, to go fishing on "dirty" lakes. There are two of the latter on the territory of the reserve: Berdenish and Uruskul, as well as the radioactive river Karabolka and the legendary Techa, into which all the liquid radioactive waste of the Mayak plant was originally dumped. Fishing in the mentioned reservoirs it is forbidden, swimming too, but for some citizens the prohibitions seem to be created in order to break them ...

MUSLYUMOVO

The territory of the VUGZ, although indicated on the maps in green, but certainly not the best place to relax and have a picnic in nature. However, the real cancerous tumor of these places is located at some distance, in the southeast of Ozersk and the Mayak plant. We are talking about the village of Muslyumov, located on the banks of the Techa River.

Muslyumovo is also a kind of protected area, fenced barbed wire and has been under the supervision of scientists for a long time. But it’s not animals that live there, but people, over whom, apparently, a long-term medical experiment is being carried out.

As mentioned above, initially the liquid waste of the Mayak plant was poured into the nearby Techa River, the waters of which were supposed to carry radioactive rubbish away and for a long time. The idea itself is doubtful, but before that, the world was on the verge of a new war. The latter, fortunately, was avoided, but for those who lived downstream of the now radioactive river, the future became a chronic radiation nightmare.

Most of the people, of course, were evicted - they were sent to a safe distance from infected places. They left only Muslyumovo and its inhabitants - for 50 years, knowing full well about the effect of radiation on the human body. The wildness lies in the fact that all these years the villagers have been drinking water from Techa (because there is no other alternative), eating locally produced products and every year undergoing a medical examination, at which no one really says what they are sick with. The most common diagnosis that is made here is "a general disease of the body of varying degrees."

In fact, Muslyumovo is the only place on our planet where people with chronic radiation sickness live. In terms of the percentage of patients with leukemia (blood cancer) per capita, the village ranks third in the world, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over the past decades, almost every child in Muslyumovo was born with some kind of genetic pathology, and 70% of schoolchildren had mental defects. Without exaggeration, since 1960, an epidemic of cancer of all forms and varieties known to medicine has been raging in the village, and by and large nothing is being done to treat and resettle people. The Muslyumov experiment continues, and the words of a young resident of the village that flashed on the Internet are recalled: “We are not afraid of death, we are afraid of torment and terrible suffering from cancer ... But it was possible to live life so beautifully ... "

Polessky State Radiation-Ecological Reserve (PSREZ)

Another curious reserve - PGREZ (Polesye State Radiation and Ecological Reserve) - was formed in 1988 after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It is located on the border of Belarus and Ukraine and includes the territories of three districts of the Gomel region, most affected by the Chernobyl explosion. The distance from the border of the Polessky GREZ to the administrative center of the exclusion zone - the city of Chernobyl - is 26 kilometers to the north and 14 kilometers to the east. The level of contamination of the area with cesium, strontium, isotopes of plutonium and americium is very high in places. However, this does not prevent 120 species of birds, 54 species of mammals, including bears, lynxes, badgers and even bison, from settling here.

Every year about 4 million dollars are allocated from the budget of Belarus for PGRER, which allows maintaining a staff of 700 employees who serve 215,000 hectares of territory. The perimeter is patrolled by security officers, and checkpoints are located on the roads, where all cars entering the territory are carefully inspected. Penalties for unauthorized entry are attached, communication with the Belarusian police or KGB officers too. Definitely, getting to the Chernobyl-infected lands is much easier from the Ukrainian side, but is it worth it? Is it just to remember and realize the scale of the tragedy ...

The accident on September 29, 1957 (Sunday) 16 hours 22 minutes local time. There was an explosion of can 14 of the C-3 complex. Due to the failure of the cooling system, an explosion occurred in a 300 cubic meter tank containing about 80 m³ of highly radioactive nuclear waste. The explosion, estimated at tens of tons of TNT, destroyed the tank, the concrete floor 1 meter thick and weighing 160 tons was thrown aside, about 20 million curies of radiation were released into the atmosphere. Part of the radioactive substances were raised by the explosion to a height of 1-2 km and formed a cloud consisting of liquid and solid aerosols. Within hours, radioactive substances fell out over a distance of km in the northeast direction from the explosion site (in the direction of the wind). The territory of several enterprises of the Mayak plant, a military camp, a fire station, a colony of prisoners, and then an area of ​​​​square km turned out to be in the zone of radiation contamination. with a population of 217 settlements in three regions: Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk and Tyumen.

During the liquidation of the consequences of the accident, 23 villages from the most polluted areas with a population of 10 to 12 thousand people were resettled, and buildings, property and livestock were destroyed. To prevent the spread of radiation in 1959, by a government decision, a sanitary protection zone was formed on the most contaminated part of the radioactive trace, where any economic activity was prohibited, and since 1968, the East Ural State Reserve was formed on this territory. Now the zone of contamination is called the East Ural Radioactive Trace (EURS).

The official cause of the disaster “Violation of the cooling system due to corrosion and failure of controls in one of the tanks of the storage of radioactive waste, with a volume of 300 cubic meters, caused the self-heating of tons of high-level waste stored there, mainly in the form of nitrate-acetate compounds. Evaporation of water, drying the residue and heating it to a temperature of degrees led September 29, 1957 at 16:00 local time to the explosion of the contents of the tank. The power of the explosion is estimated in tons of trinitrotoluene.

East Ural radioactive trace (EURT) The total length of the EURT was approximately 300 km in length, with a width of 5-10 kilometers. On this area of ​​almost 20 thousand square meters. km. about 270 thousand people lived, of which about 10 thousand people ended up in the territory with a density of radioactive contamination over 2 curies per square kilometer for strontium-90 and 2100 people with a density of over 100 curies per square kilometer. On the territory of more than 2 curies per square kilometer of strontium-90, approximately 23 settlements, mostly small villages, entered. The EURT included a territory bounded by an isoline of two to four curies per square kilometer for strontium-90, with an area of ​​about 700 square meters. km. The lands of this zone are recognized as temporarily unsuitable for agriculture. Here it is forbidden to use land and forests, and water bodies, to plow and sow, cut down forests, mow hay and graze livestock, hunt, fish, pick mushrooms and berries. No one is allowed here without special permission.

Elimination of the consequences of the accident From the nearest cities of Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg, young men were mobilized for liquidation without warning them of the danger. Entire military units were brought in to cordon off the contaminated area. Then the soldiers were forbidden to say where they were. Young children 7-13 years old from the villages were sent to bury the radioactive crop (it was autumn in the yard). Combine "Mayak" used for work on the elimination of even pregnant women. In the Chelyabinsk region and the city of nuclear scientists, after the accident, the death rate increased, people died right at work, freaks were born, entire families died out.

Lake of Death In 1967, due to the early spring and hot summer, the water level in the lakes dropped sharply and their bottom was exposed. The dust storm, which lasted for two weeks, lifted into the air the bottom sediments of Lake Karachay with 600 thousand Ci of radioactivity, which led to the contamination of another 2.7 thousand km2 (contamination density above 0.1 Ci/km2). 63 covered with radioactive dust settlements, where 41.5 thousand people lived, people from the near zone of the trace received an average of 1.3 rem due to external radiation, 18 thousand people were resettled.

Consequences Chelyabinsk doctor N. N. Abramova said that over the past year and a half, 150 people have died in Tatarskaya Karabolka, and over the past 25 years, one and a half thousand. Today, 400 people live in the village of Tatarskaya Karabolka, one third of them are paralyzed, almost all of them have cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, everyone suffers from gastrointestinal diseases, pain in the joints, there are also amputees. In the village, there are often disabled children with Down syndrome, crazy.

Mortality The Techa Extended Cohort includes individuals born before 1950 who lived on the banks of the river during any time interval between 1950 and 1960. For most of the individuals included in this cohort, information is available on vital status and causes of death. A dose-dependent increase in cancer mortality among cohort members was found. Represented preliminary estimates radiation risk of malignant neoplasms based on mortality data. The analysis included deaths from malignant tumors and 61 deaths from leukemia. According to calculations, about 2.5% of deaths from malignant tumors and 63% of deaths from leukemia in this cohort are associated with exposure to ionizing radiation.

Eyewitness testimony. Nadezhda Kutepova, liquidator's daughter, Ozersk My father was 17 years old and studied at a technical school in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg). On September 30, 1957, he and his other fellow students were loaded directly from class into trucks and brought to Mayak to eliminate the consequences of the accident. They were told nothing about the seriousness of the danger of radiation. They worked for days. They were given personal dosimeters but were punished for overdosing, so many people left the dosimeters in their clothes drawers to “not overdose.” In 1983, he fell ill with cancer, he was operated on in Moscow, but he began to metastasize throughout the body, and after 3 years he died. We were told then that it was not from the accident, but then this disease was officially recognized as a consequence of the Mayak accident. My grandmother also participated in the liquidation of the accident and officially received a large dose. I never saw her because she died of cancer of the lymphatic system long before I was born, 8 years after the accident.

Eyewitness account Gulshara Ismagilova, resident of the village of Tatarskaya Karabolka I was 9 years old and we went to school. One day they gathered us and said that we would harvest the crops. It was strange to us that instead of harvesting, we were forced to bury it. And there were policemen standing around, they guarded us so that no one would run away. In our class, most of the students later died of cancer, and those who remained are very sick, women suffer from infertility.

Eyewitness testimony Natalya Smirnova, resident of Ozersk I remember that there was a terrible panic in the city then. Cars drove through all the streets and washed the roads. We were told on the radio to throw away everything that was in our houses that day and constantly mop the floor. Many people, workers of the Lighthouse then fell ill with acute radiation sickness, everyone was afraid to say something or ask under the threat of dismissal or even arrest.

Eyewitness account Rizvan Khabibullin, a resident of the village of Tatarskaya Karabolka high school, harvested root crops in the fields of the collective farm. Zhdanov. Around 4 pm everyone heard a roar from somewhere in the west and felt a gust of wind. In the evening, a strange fog descended on the field. Of course, we did not suspect anything and continued to work. The work continued in the following days. A few days later, for some reason, we were forced to destroy root crops that had not yet been exported by that time ... By the winter, I began to have terrible headaches. I remember how exhausted I was rolling on the floor, how my temples tightened like a hoop, there was a nosebleed, I almost lost my sight.

Struggle Residents who live near the plant have been trying to stop its work for many years, constant courts do not give any result. A special society has been created that is fighting for the resettlement of residents from the radioactive zone. But unfortunately, everything is unsuccessful, the chemical plant is still working and pouring its radioactive waste into the Techa River.

Literature: Site "Ural Chernobyl: the tragedy of the Tatars" "Chernobyl lessons" Information and analytical agency "Antiatom.ru" html html Approximate area of ​​the East Ural radioactive trace c737c32f5478c4e c737c32f5478c4e

For the serious development of serious sciences, there is nothing more pernicious than bestial seriousness. We need humor and some mockery of ourselves, of the sciences. Then everything will flourish.
Nikolai Timofeev-Resovsky

Radionuclide contamination of the biosphere, caused by the development of nuclear technologies, nuclear weapons testing, man-made accidents, has acquired a global character, reaching a critical level in some regions. Together with a powerful load of other technogenic factors, this circumstance makes the problem of the consequences of anthropogenic impact on all living things especially relevant. The tasks that scientists of the Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology (IERIZh) of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, followers of the outstanding scientist, biologist, geneticist Nikolai Timofeev-Resovsky, the famous Bison from the book of Daniil Granin, are solving today, are becoming ever larger. And the old building with leaving from under the feet wooden floors in the Botanical Garden of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Yekaterinburg, the receptacle of several laboratories of the Institute, everything is the same - since 1955, when the Bison began to work here.

At the end of last year, Vera Pozolotina, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Head of the Laboratory of Population Radiobiology of the Institute of Economics and Life Sciences of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor of the Department of Ecology of the Ural Federal University, was awarded the N.V. Timofeev-Resovsky. For a number of years she has been studying vegetation in the zone of the East Ural radioactive trace.

Know ours, Arctic Ocean

- Vera Nikolaevna, explain right away whether it is necessary to be afraid of the background radiation in the Urals in general?

Natural radiation - no. This factor has always existed in the Universe, including on Earth, although we learned about it a hundred years ago, when natural radionuclides and ionizing radiation were discovered. In addition to cosmic rays, the main part of the natural background radiation is the Earth's natural radioisotopes. In the 1960s and 1970s, radiobiologists asked themselves the question: what would happen if the natural radiation background was removed? Experiments to reduce the background even by 40% showed that absolutely all the studied living organisms, from bacteria to mammals, reacted with a decrease in physiological activity. So this is the background of our life.

The danger is represented by elevated levels that arise as a result of man-made disasters. In the Urals, the greatest concern is caused by the Mayak software - in 1949, on Southern Urals, 70 kilometers from the now millionth Chelyabinsk, near the ancient Ural cities of Kyshtym and Kasli, they created an enterprise for industrial production plutonium-239 to create nuclear weapons. In the early years, the achievement of military-political goals overshadowed the protection of the environment and human health. Absence scientific knowledge and technological experience gave rise to serious problems. In conditions of acute shortage of resources and time, simplified schemes for handling radioactive waste were adopted. From 1949, when the plant began to work, until the autumn of 1951, liquid waste was dumped into the Techa River ...

- No recycling was even provided?

Nothing, there was a direct flow from the pipe to the river system Techa - Iset - Tobol - Irtysh - Ob - Gulf of Ob - Kara Sea. Studies have shown that at least 10% of discharges went into the Kara Sea, but most of them settled in the zone closest to the enterprise. Since the autumn of 1951, instead of dumping into the Techa, natural and artificial reservoirs, such as Lake Karachay, began to be used as storage facilities for liquid radioactive waste with medium activity levels.

September 29, 1957 at 16:22 due to the failure of the cooling system at Mayak, an explosion of a 300 m3 tank occurred, which contained about 80 m3 of highly radioactive nuclear waste. The explosion, estimated at tens of tons of TNT, destroyed the tank, the concrete floor 1 meter thick and weighing 160 tons was thrown aside. 20 million Ci (7.4 1017 Bq) of radioactive substances (144Ce + 144Pr, 95Nb + 95Zr, 90Sr, 137Cs, plutonium isotopes) went into the atmosphere, of which approximately 18 million Ci fell on the territory of Mayak, and about 2 million Ki - beyond its borders, forming the East Ural radioactive trace (EURS). For comparison, the release from the Chernobyl accident is estimated at 50 million Ci, two and a half times more. But we also did not feel enough. Most of it spread on the industrial site, people who were engaged in the decontamination of this territory were badly injured.

Part of the radioactive substances (2 million Ci) was raised by the explosion to a height of 1 - 2 km and formed a cloud consisting of liquid and solid aerosols. The wind blew from the southwest. Within 10 - 11 hours, radioactive substances fell out in a narrow trail over a distance of 300 km in a northeast direction from the explosion site, forming EURT.

In the most polluted head part of it, in 1966, the East Ural State radiation reserve. The territory was strictly guarded, as, however, it is guarded now, although the status of the reserve has been removed.

- Was this topic closed?

Yes, everything related to the nuclear department was done in an atmosphere of the strictest secrecy. We started working at the EURS (its peripheral part) in the early 90s. The topic of the Kyshtym accident was opened after the Chernobyl one, when it became obvious that Chernobyl could not be silenced in the same way as the Ural incident was silenced in its time. I personally had the opportunity to work at the EURS in 1990: then a delegation from the International Union of Radioecologists came to the institute. They were not allowed into the Chelyabinsk region. But what struck me was that they knew more about the EURS than we did. I think the scientists had intelligence at their disposal. At that time we had not even heard of Karachai, we did not know the true boundaries of the trail. In general, before perestroika, if someone showed an increased interest in this, then he received it for it. Only in the same year, a book edited by Avetik Burnazyan about the results of the Kyshtym accident appeared in the open press.

In the Chernobyl zone after the accident, specialists were needed who would have experience in working in a radioactively contaminated zone. Such were in the Urals. Unfortunately, not all the methods that have proven themselves in our country were useful to the Chernobyl liquidators. For example, deep plowing of polluted lands was effective here, in which soil layers 50–70 cm thick were turned over, burying the dirty soil. upper layer. We are dominated by heavy loamy soils, and in Polissya sands, the method did not work.

The Kyshtym accident of 1957 was openly discussed here and abroad in 1989-1990. I went on an internship to Denmark in 1992. I asked to show me what my colleagues know. A thick folder was placed in front of me: scientific publications, reports, including American ones. Even the contour of the EURS was made quite accurately by foreigners, comparing the maps that were sold in our stores: until 1957 there were such and such villages - and suddenly they were not on the maps.

The container that exploded at Mayak contained mostly short-lived radionuclides; four years later, they decayed almost completely. The main pollutant remained - strontium-90, which has a half-life of 28 years.

Price "any price"

- Since the accident, 56 years have passed, which means that the second half-life period has ended. So, is everything clean in the zone?

Alas, it is not. In the head part of the EURT, near the epicenter of the accident, the concentrations of strontium-90 exceed the background level by thousands of times. Cesium-137 was added to it, which also has a half-life of 28 years. Where, you ask? When it was understood that it was impossible to dump liquid radioactive production waste into Techa, from October 1951 the main flow was directed to Lake Karachay, which as a result turned into an artificial storage facility called Pond V-9. Gradually, according to official data, more than 600 kCi of activity accumulated there, of which 30% of strontium-90 and 70% of cesium-137, with most of it in bottom sediments. In 1967 there was an exceptionally dry summer and a winter with little snow. The mirror of Lake Karachay has decreased. Radioactively contaminated bottom sediments - silt and fine sand - were exposed. They were picked up by the wind and carried over long distances, including to the EURT zone, that is, secondary pollution occurred.

- To what extent? Any ratings?

We are constantly assessing radionuclide contamination of the soil and vegetation cover. This is the first and integral part of work in emergency zones - to draw up a general picture of the pollution of the region, to determine the main sources of emissions, their isotope composition, and the dynamics of the development of the situation since the moment of pollution. According to our estimates, the territory of the EURS currently contains a total of about 15.5 thousand Ci of strontium-90, 1.8 thousand Ci of cesium-137, and about 500 Ci of plutonium isotopes. In the zone closest to the epicenter of the accident, the concentration of radionuclides in soils is hundreds and thousands of times higher than the natural background. In addition to general assessments of ecosystem pollution, the laboratory considers dose loads on plants and animals in the zone and studies the biological effects of chronic exposure to different organisms.

- Does the current level of ideas and those who poured waste into Techa, into Karachay vary greatly?

At that time they did not know much of what is known now. Various industrial waste poured into the rivers, not imagining what consequences this would lead to. But even if the pioneers had known about the consequences, things would hardly have changed. The priorities were different. It was necessary to create a "product" (atomic weapon) in the shortest time, at any price.

- Before Chernobyl, they did not study the closed EURS at all?

Studied, of course: those who were admitted. In 1958, an experimental research station (ONIS) was created at Mayak, whose employees studied the problems of EURT in a very comprehensive and detailed manner. Academician of VASKhNIL Vsevolod Klechkovsky headed these works. Employees of the Institute of General Genetics, Moscow State University and others worked on the basis of ONIS. Since the beginning of the 50s, branches of the Institute of Biophysics of the Ministry of Health have been operating, now it is a powerful Scientific and Practical Center for Radiation Medicine. And ONIS was liquidated during perestroika.

- What have you researched?

The annual reports of ONIS contained unique data, but they were put on the shelf and beyond the Mayak software, you didn’t-ho-dee-li. These reports are now in a closed fund. True, "Mayak" publishes the journal "Issues of Radiation Safety", publishes archival materials in an appendix to the journal. In 1993, the first collective monograph on the consequences of the Kyshtym accident was published, covering the most significant results of the work of the first period.

What grows in the new forest

How different are the goals of the first researchers of the accident and modern ones? What did you pick up on and where did you advance your research?

In the early years Scientific research on the territory of the EURS, as already noted, was headed by Academician VASKhNIL Klechkovsky, he was also a consultant on atomic energy at the Council of Ministers of the USSR. He formulated a concept according to which, in the case of radioactive contamination of the environment, the main attention was paid to the problem of obtaining "clean" agricultural products ... Radiobiological questions were of less interest to Soviet researchers.

For us, the main problem is the study of radiobiological effects, how plants and animals have suffered. AT public consciousness the anthropocentric principle has always prevailed and is now alive: if a person has not suffered, then everything is in order. About the environment, living organisms, natural communities began to think only in recent decades. Increasingly, it is proposed to introduce an environmental principle into regulation, that is, not just regulate emission standards toxic substances, assess their content in the main environments, but also take into account the state of organisms (non-human biota) and biosystems. This direction is now rapidly developing in the West and in Russia, then it did not exist at all.

Of course, I would very much like to know in more detail what the researchers saw in the first year after the accident. For example, we know from Chernobyl research that coniferous trees in the near zone died within a few weeks, and hardwoods were also badly damaged. So in the near zone of the EURT, immediately after the accident, when the doses exceeded the present level by more than 3000 times, the forests died. Now there are already new ones. Nature is strong, its adaptive capacity is very great. Restoration proceeds in many ways. In the affected areas, the species richness of both plants and animals is high, although the radioactive contamination here is still huge. Morphoses, that is, deformities, appear in plants several times more often than in “clean” territories.

Our task is to study the state of the current EURT plant populations, assess the long-term consequences of the accident, and identify recovery mechanisms that allow stable existence in the contaminated zone.

- Did the researchers who were the first to start dangerous work in the zone make preliminary forecasts?

Their idea was simple: to study the radiosensitivity of all plants that make up the phytocenosis in the laboratory, upload the data to a powerful computer - it will show which species will die, which ones will live. But in fact, everything turned out to be wrong, the forecasts differed from reality, and deviations of 5-6 times were observed both in the direction of overestimating and underestimating the effects.

Fundamentally new in our research was the introduction of ecological concepts, principles, and laws into radiobiology. We were interested in the problems of the “supra-organismal” level. When studying a specific model object, we consider not just a plant, but a set of plants of this species (population) in the pollution zone. We take into account ecological features species and all types of variability inherent in their real habitat. This variability may be due to the genetic heterogeneity of populations and to numerous environmental factors that modify the effects of radiation.

For example, weather conditions vary from year to year, depending on the combination of temperature and precipitation during the main periods of seed formation, the radiative effect can be enhanced or weakened. If we limit ourselves to an assessment for one year, you can hit the sky with your finger. These are only physical factors, but there are also biotic effects due to relationships between species in the ecosystem, which can be direct or indirect, mediated, multidirectional. The combination of these factors is so diverse and themselves biological systems are so complex that in principle it is impossible to give an accurate forecast, these are already the laws of mathematics. Our task is to isolate the main characteristics of living organisms responsible for the successful, long-term existence of populations and to determine the range of their variability under certain scenarios of events.

Radiobiologists work with pure lines of animals, varietal cultures in experiments where all factors are controlled. This makes it possible to isolate radiobiological effects and elucidate the mechanisms of action of radiation at the level of biomolecules, cells, and organisms. Radioecologists, on the other hand, control neither temperature, nor humidity, nor other physical and chemical parameters of the environment, nor such biotic attacks, for example, as an increase in the number of insect pests. We consider the complex of living biosystems and changing conditions as nature created them. Knowing the results of laboratory studies, the main radiobiological patterns, applying ecological principles, we can give a probabilistic prediction of fate different types under conditions of radioactive contamination. That is, you need to work in both areas.

I will note one more circumstance. Prior to the Chernobyl accident, the main interests of radiobiologists were focused on studying the effects of large doses of radiation. Small ones have been studied less. Meanwhile, it is impossible to extrapolate effects on them from the region of high doses, low irradiation has completely different patterns, they cause fundamentally different effects. We do not deal with humans - not our topic, we work with non-human biota - with animals, plants. But we see many common effects.

- What do you see?

Briefly: many morphoses occur in plants in the EURT zone. All of them are the result of genetic disorders that occur constantly both in somatic cells and in generative ones, in the latter case they are inherited. For example, a widespread plant of white doze normally has male and female plants. And in the pollution zone, we found plants in which both the female and male gametaphytes are present in the same flower. This is a clear genetic disorder. We planted seeds on experimental sites, got offspring - the same hermaphrodites, this is an inherited disorder, which is the result of a mutation in the male Y-chromosome. An increased level of impairment can be passed from generation to generation, we observed this effect up to the sixth generation.

The comparative aspect of the problem of technogenic impact on living systems is very interesting. In the Urals, we have enough zones of influence of various industrial enterprises that pollute the environment primarily with heavy metals. We compared how radiation and chemical stress (the area of ​​the Nizhny Tagil Metallurgical Plant) affects plant reproduction using the example of a dandelion. This species is widespread, it is a facultative apomict, that is, it can produce seeds without participation masculine, a full-fledged embryo is formed from an unfertilized egg. It turns out the offspring - "pure line".

It turned out that clones from the zone contaminated with heavy metals after the removal of this stress have a high viability and are resistant to provocations of various negative factors. Clones from the EURT zone in a year also gave offspring with high germination, but their resistance to additional influences was very low. Radiobiologists attribute this phenomenon to the instability of the genome, which, once occurring, is transmitted to the next generations.

- What is the problem of genome instability?

It is very easy to get out of balance. It is assumed that ionizing radiation generates various conformational changes in it, which change the rate of expression of various genes. This means that any additional impact: temperature factor, heavy metals, organic matter, radiation, viruses can cause a violation of homeostasis, which will manifest itself at the level of the body. For these reasons, we observe a very large variability of different traits in plants in the EURT zone. If the usual factors: temperature, high humidity or drought in background populations cause only some fluctuation of physiological parameters, then in radiation zones the range of variability in populations is increased several times. Unfavorable environmental conditions in addition to radiation exposure are enough to significantly reduce the reproductive potential.

But there are years when, on the contrary, stimulation effects are observed in the contaminated zone. This gives a wide range of variability of all signs and properties, of which the reproductive function is the most important. After all, populations, as you know, exist not only in space, but also in time. For them to exist for a long time, it is necessary that the offspring be born of high quality.

Let's go through the levels

- What are the directions of new research?

Timofeev-Resovsky said: “I went through the levels. And I advise you.” He was a geneticist and claimed that all genetic information is recorded at the molecular-cellular level. And it can be changed by irradiation. The next level is organismal. Here the information becomes explicit, manifests itself phenotypically. After all, while it is in the chromosomes, it can be realized, or maybe not. And the third level is the population level. They have their own laws, there is a selection, it is decided which part of the population will remain and give offspring. This is what we are realizing, using new opportunities: to study, along with the morphological and physiological, the enzymatic structure of populations, and DNA variability. Thus we come closer to the truth that he postulated, and these studies determine our prospects for the near future.

The decay of strontium-90 is still ongoing, generating effective beta radiation. Formally, it is believed that at least ten half-lives, that is, 280 years, must pass in order for the territory affected by the Kyshtym accident to become relatively prosperous. Having formulated the concept of long-term consequences, I can confidently say that biota research in the EURT zone should be continued at all levels of life organization. Recovery processes in living organisms and their communities are observed along with the effects of injury. We have the ability to identify these patterns.

- Will everything be normal around Lake Karachay only after 280 years?

Everything is complicated with Karachay. It is being buried now, so we can guarantee that 1967 will not happen again. But part of the radioactively contaminated water has formed a lens at a considerable depth, and it is more difficult to control groundwater than surface water.

The task of our further research is not to see how something affects something, but to reveal some fundamental foundations of life. They are very well manifested when biosystems are taken out of the framework of comfort. The EURS zone is a natural testing ground, where a lot of surprises open up. Different species have different adaptations, and what works in one species, for example, protection at the biochemical level, does not work at all in another.

It is important for us to reveal the whole range of adaptive responses at different levels. Another example: intracellular recovery systems were discovered by radiobiologists. Special sets of enzymes are launched after damage to the DNA molecule has occurred. Their task is to heal this damage. But the significance of these systems is much wider. They heal any damage, no matter what caused it: chemicals, viruses, radiation. This discovery actually removes the main contradiction evolutionary theory. Geneticists have discovered that the genome is not fixed, many factors can affect it, but species remain stable. And this is due to powerful systems that restore the integrity of the genome.

- There is practical use these studies?

On the one hand, this fundamental research On the other hand, we evaluate the quality of the environment in which we live. I cannot note any very hot practical interest. But they are needed, that's for sure. Now the Mayak software strictly controls the study, but does not interfere. At scientific conferences, our data is also referred to when it is necessary to convince the population of what to be afraid of and what not to be. It is important for practitioners to know the patterns of distribution of radionuclides in space, safe levels of radiation for plants and animals. We answer these questions.

- How well do we know where and how the space in which we live is polluted?

Everything is open to the scientific community, in the Urals we know almost all the pain points. The situation is changing around the Beloyarsk NPP: in the first units, built using other technologies than the current ones, the water that cooled them was discharged directly into water bodies. Elevated concentrations were observed both in the reservoir zone and in the Olkhovsky swamp. Now the fourth block is being launched there and the construction of the fifth is planned. It is very important not to repeat the mistakes of the past, to investigate from what starting level the new blocks will start working, so that later the old sins are not attributed to new technologies.