The whole world was startled by the Chernobyl nuclear accident, as it had the capability to contaminated Europe. In the backwoods of Russia, there is a city of atomic weapons complex, which has survived three nuclear disasters in the last five decades. In 1957, there was an outburst of the cooling system. A decade later, a storm was instrumental in scattering radioactive dust. For six years, the complex systematically threw radioactive waste into the single most source of water that provided water to twenty-four villages.
Plutonium and Tritium for Soviet nuclear weapons are generated at three hidden cites each of which is a prohibited city for common entrance. These cities cannot be located on maps, as they are not mentioned so as to remove them from the public gaze. The ban on traveling to these locations has been removed just until recently. Foreign visitors and especially the environmentalists have not been permitted to move in the vicinity of these closely guarded cites for a very long time. The complex, which is officially known as Chelyabinsk-40, is in Chelyabinsk province and is near the east corner of southern Urals. It is situated in the vicinity of Lake Kyzyltash, in the most famous basin along with several other associated lakes.
The people of the Chelyabinsk Region have experienced three nuclear disasters. Mayak complex went on to dumping radioactive waste into the Techa River for more than six years. It was incidentally the only source of water for a couple of dozen villages. These villages were located on the banks of this river. The inhabitants of the four biggest of these villages were never evacuated and they consequently suffered from the worst.
Only recently, the information has come to the public knowledge why authorities stretched wire along the sides of rivers some thirty-five years ago. Now, a new law has been made which allows the residents of these places to shift their places according to their consent. This is the outcome of the efforts of a local environmental group, which has worked most strenuously for this cause. However, the scope of the new law is unlimited and only one village comes in its ambit.
In 1957, the area underwent a calamity when the cooling system of radioactive waste did not perform well and burst. “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, which released some 20 MCi of radioactivity” (Pollock, Richard, 1978. “Soviets Experience Nuclear Accident). Millions of curies are infused throughout the region. Radiations endangered the lives of thousands of people. Less than one percent of these people could be moved to safe places and some of them were those who were evacuated after considerable time periods had lapsed.
The third disaster struck the region a decade later. The mayak complex has been exploiting Karachay Lake as its dumping reservoir. In 1967, a drought caused the lake to have its water level considerably decreased. The gale-force winds scattered the radioactive waste on a vast area spreading for thousands of square kilometers. It caused the radiation to penetrate the bodies of half a million people. “At the beginning of operation of Mayak, the average annual exposures for reactor workers and chemical plant workers were 940 mSv and 1,130mSv respectively. (At present, the ICRP safety standard is 1mSv per year.) The workers from Mayak lived in Chelyabinsk-65 and Chelyabinsk-70, both closed cities situated about 80 km from Chelyabinsk city, and close to the Mayak complex”
Chelyabinsk-40 or the Kyshtym complex is popular for the disastrous explosion that struck it in 1957. “Then in 1957, a nuclear waste storage tank exploded at the Mayak Complex contaminating a total area of 23,000 square km and releasing twice the amount of radiation as the Chernobyl accident” (Tan Cheng Li, Chelyabinsk Nuke Horrors Revealed). The most peculiar thing about these horrifying accidents of world history is that the Soviet government did not acknowledge them on time. The tanks were sunk in cooled water. The monitory system had its own loopholes. However, the waste started becoming dry. The overwhelming quantity of radioactivity fell out abruptly close to the vessel. The remaining material formed the radioactive cloud that moved as far as the other provinces of Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk, and Tumen provinces. There were more than two hundred towns and villages with a population close to three lacs in that area which was polluted to more than 0.1 curies of strontium per square kilometer. All the water supply sources were poisoned. Evacuations were considerably delayed and people had to face the onslaught of radioactive material for many days. “In addition to pollution from the nuclear complex, the metallurgical industry has heavily contaminated this region. The Ural Mountains are rich in iron ore, chromium, copper, and nickel and the region has an enormous metallurgical industry”. (Site directory, the most contaminated spot on the planet).
The adjacent areas were evacuated so late that more than a year passed. The population had to rely on radioactive food. The people of this region after imbibing radioactive waste and dust encountered various diseases and side effects. One-fifth of these people ultimately showed a decrease in leukocytes in their blood. Nearly, 1000 people inhabiting the thousand square kilometers were contaminated with more than two curies of strontium 90 per square kilometer. There are unreported deaths as there is no record available of the havocs played by the nuclear disasters. The accident is a part of the projects’ dangerous policy since they’re no regulation of radioactive waste. Officials have always maintained a lax attitude. They have flouted all norms of humanity with a sense of impunity and have successfully kept a lid of secrets over their blunders. For so many years, the nuclear discharge was thrown to Techa River and over the years the workers were working in this ambiance filled with radioactive waste material. There were surprisingly high levels of radiation that the people had to struggle with to survive.
Until recently the region has been insulated from the rest of the world. In 1992, the area was opened for the world. The Tech River is still contaminated. Life expectancy ranges from 15 to 55 years and ninety percent of the kids are encountering chronic diseases in their lives. When one pays heed to the plight of the farmers, teachers, doctors, and factory laborers who are the inhabitants of this region, one is amazed at the brutality of the government that put everything else before the welfare of the people. It was so much obsessed with the defense priorities that people suffered and she did not care for the people who faced the nuclear disasters only because the priority of the government was nuclear complex, not people. Nuclear plants were pursued in a manner that would defy all norms and manners of management of such programs, as is done elsewhere in the world. “If you multiply Chernobyl a hundred times, you have a picture of what happened in Chelyabinsk. Please do not compare Chelyabinsk with Chernobyl because it is a much different, and far worse problem…the disaster at Chelyabinsk has been going on far longer and has involved a far larger amount of radiation than Chernobyl. (Hertsgaard, 3)
For forty-five years this criminal negligence was not brought to the fore by the government. President Boris Yeltsin signed an order for changing the status of the area. Western scientists have declared the area as the most contaminated one on this planet. In 1940, the atomic weapon complex Mayak was constructed and it has been acknowledged just in the recent past. For forty-five years, the Chelyabinsk province of Russia was closed to all foreigners. Only in January of 1992 did President Boris Yeltsin sign a decree changing that changed the status of the area. Russian doctors who have inspected radiation illness in the region think that the residents of the banks of the Techa river have got an average of four times more radiation than those of the Chernobyl. In the years after the disaster, nearly half a million people in the era have received the radioactive material which engendered them to a level twenty times more than those of Chernobyl victims.
The city came to light when Stalin during the Second World War used it as storage for weapons. It is the most unfortunate city as its only claim to fame is the weapons and disasters and it was once known as tank city. The horrifying tales of the misery of the people were exacerbated when even the government refused to acknowledge that cancer exists in the region. Many children are born without the most fundamental body parts. The birth rates have declined due to the hopelessness of healthy children. Who wants crippled children to be born with. The doctors are quite oblivious to nuclear biology and radiology consequently; the people of the region have suffered. The government established some institutes to check the villagers but it is a lackluster effort on the part of the government because the results are not encouraging. No villager has been given proper treatment. They have not been told the reasons for illness. Their diseases remain undiagnosed. Only the upcoming foreigners are telling people the reasons for all of their plight and predicament that they have been irradiated. “The explosion in September 1957 exposed 272,000 people to significant radiation. Half a century later, Mayak is one of the most radioactive places on earth, and the accident continues to have a devastating legacy” (Greenpeace, Actvisits Demand Government To Stop Sending Waste To Russia).
The authorities are actively engaged in putting a lid of secrecy on the worst and pretended negligent acts of the government. They have been coercing the medical staff to write something else instead of the true problem afflicting the people. These efforts are aimed at suppressing the actual facts that happened in the form of three nuclear disasters in the region in few years. When Chernobyl occurred everybody was trembling with fear, this calamity even greater than that of Chernobyl in scope and intensity has not been paid proper heed by the world at large. There have been lesser attempts to put pressure on the soviets to tackle the issue properly as it is her creation. The defense priorities of the autocratic system made people suffer heavily. Death and disease in the region after the disaster have increased on a very large scale. The villagers have become increasingly ill.
The figures for birth malformation and cancer deaths have staggered but the official has always refused to take measures that would scuttle these monsters. Statistics do reveal that the gene mutation in the affected regions was manifold times higher than average for the rest of the Russian federation. The local authorities have stated the reason for the high growth rate among the new infants and the high mortality rates to a deteriorated standard of living. A comprehensive report, which revealed the figures of the misery of the people, was published in 1991. Even much after the disasters from 1989 to 1990, the cancers in the population showed an upward trend by 21 percent. The diseases of the circulatory system underwent the same fate. These figures even may have been distorted but those who collect such statistics are under tremendous pressure by the government authorities to report according to her whims and not the actual state of affairs. The rate of leukemia has doubled over the course of two decades. The life span of the people has undergone considerable decline. The average life of the people of the affected region is lesser when compared to the rest of the entire country. The public officials have examined people on most occasions and the disinterested professionals have been given limited access and have not been facilitated for the treatment of the people.
Even down to this day, the local population has not been made acquainted with the real levels of radioisotopes in the products that they grow there. German scientists have worked on some of the products and have found amazing levels of the fatal substance in them. It is only by some remote sources the information has started pouring in the villages in a bid to sensitize them about the ambiance in which they are struck. Doctors have estimated that a significant portion of the population at childbearing age is sterile. People are surfing the contaminated food without any limitations. “Chelyabinsk, the capital of the Chelyabinsk province in Russia and the site of one of the former Soviet Union’s major nuclear manufacturing centers, still suffers from extreme contamination and pollution” (Log TV, The Most Contaminated Spot on the Planet: Chelyabinsk Nuclear Disasters). There is no proper watchdog in the form of a government agency to bother about the health of the people properly.
The Karachi accident did unleash its fatal effects on many of the populated areas. The most unfortunate thing about these disasters is that the people were not evacuated from these areas effectively and satisfactorily. The radiations penetrated the bodies and products to such an extent that no proper treatment was possible and people were left high and dry on the brutal whims of the functioning of the contaminated consequence. “According to the Russian Scientific Centre Kurchatov and the Obninsk Institute of Radiology, a total of 437,000 people have been affected by the three accidents at Mayak. Of the total 437,000 people affected, very few were ever evacuated from the area. Very often the evacuees were moved to areas not far from the contaminated zone and the people continued to use their gardens within the contaminated areas”. (Pollock, Richard, 1978. “Soviets Experience Nuclear Accident). The people were to bear the brunt of high levels of radiation in the region were the laborers of malayak who housed the nearby districts and those who contributed their services during the clean-up and restoration operations.
The three nuclear disasters in Russia give an insight into the security apparatus of the Russian state which was bent upon pursuing its nuclear programs without any safeguards and proper measures taken in the civilized world to provide people the much-needed shield against the radioactive rays. However, people were left alone to bear the consequences of the blunders and criminal activities of those who were actively engaged in making weapons for the Russian state. “The two rehabilitation programs sponsored by the state have been inadequately funded, and this year there were no funds for their implementation” ( Yevgeniy Tkachenko, “Radiation Security Committee Created in Chelyabinsk).
The people of states lacking proper accountability systems often have to face the consequences of the loopholes and such was the fate of those who resided in this region. It is a matter of utmost arrogance that successive Russian governments kept on hiding the true nature of the disaster and the harmful effects it unleashed on the health of the local inhabitants and on the environment. Still, the whole picture of what actually happened in these disasters and the level of the ruination they brought forth is not known. There must be undertaken a great drive to prevent further deterioration of the health of people and a commission should be constituted to underscore the reasons and the effects of the disasters. These victims should be compensated and the whole world should make concerted efforts to stand with victims and the area in the hour of their trail.
References:
Lilliths realm 2008, Forty years of nuclear contamination in Russia.wiccan research. Web.
Site directory 2004, the most contaminated spot on the planet. Web.
Pollock, Richard, 1978. “Soviets Experience Nuclear Accident,” Critical Mass Journal 3: nn-nn.
Gyorgy, A. et al, 1979. No Nukes: Everyone’s Guide to Nuclear Power. South End Press.
Log TV, The Most Contaminated Spot on the Planet: Chelyabinsk Nuclear Disasters. Web.
Yevgeniy Tkachenko, ITAR-TASS, 2 July 1997; in “Radiation Security Committee Created in Chelyabinsk,” FBIS-TAC-97-183.Entered 8/1/97 LK.
Tan Cheng Li, Chelyabinsk Nuke Horrors Revealed. Web.
Greenpeace 2007., Actvisits Demand Government To Stop Sending Waste To Russia. Web.
Pollock, Richard, 1978. “Soviets Experience Nuclear Accident,” Critical Mass Journal 3: nn-nn.
Fleishman, D.G., et al., Cs-137 in fish of some lakes and rivers of the bryansk region and North-West Russia in 1990–1992. Journal of Environmental Radioactivity, 1994. 24: p. 145-158.
Baryakhtar, V.Gonchar, A.Zhidkov and V.Zhidkov, Radiation damages and self-spluttering of high radioactive dielectrics: Spontaneous emission of submicrometre dust particles, Condensed Matter Physics, 2002, 5(3), 449-471.