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The Kyshtym disaster, (Russian: Кыштымская авария), sometimes referred to as the Mayak disaster or Ozyorsk disaster in newer sources, was a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on 29 September 1957 at Mayak, a plutonium reprocessing production plant for nuclear weapons located in the closed city of Chelyabinsk-40 (now Ozyorsk) in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia in the ...
In 1957 Mayak was the site of the Kyshtym disaster, which at the time was the worst nuclear accident in history. [8] During this catastrophe, a poorly maintained storage tank exploded, releasing 20 million curies (740 PBq) in the form of 50–100 tons of high-level radioactive waste.
Kyshtym is near the Ozyorsk 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 ...
September 29, 1957: Mayak, Kyshtym, Soviet Union: The Kyshtym disaster was a radiation contamination accident (after a chemical explosion that occurred within a storage tank) at Mayak, a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in the Soviet Union. Estimated 200 possible cancer fatalities [33] 6 October 10, 1957: Sellafield, Cumberland, United Kingdom
In 1957, the Mayak plant was the site of a major disaster, releasing more radioactive contamination than the meltdown at Chernobyl. An improperly stored underground tank of high-level liquid nuclear waste exploded, contaminating thousands of square kilometres of territory, now known as the Eastern Ural Radioactive Trace (EURT).
Lake Karachay (Russian: Карача́й), sometimes spelled Karachai or Karachaj, was a small lake in the southern Ural Mountains in central Russia.Starting in 1951, the Soviet Union used Karachay as a dumping site for radioactive waste from Mayak, the nearby nuclear waste storage and reprocessing facility, located near the town of Ozyorsk (then called Chelyabinsk-40).
Built in the late 1940s, Mayak was one of Russia's most prominent nuclear weapons factories. The factory was kept secret by the government until 1990. When Russian president Boris Yeltsin signed a 1992 decree opening the area, Western scientists were able to gain access. The sediment of the lake bed is estimated to be composed almost entirely ...
The Kyshtym disaster, which occurred at Mayak in Russia on 29 September 1957, was rated as a level 6 on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the third most severe incident after Chernobyl and Fukushima. Because of the intense secrecy surrounding Mayak, it is difficult to estimate the death toll of Kyshtym.