The radioactive cloud
At the Ural plant «Mayak», where nuclear weapons production had been set up, a malfunction sent a tank of radioactive waste flying into the air. A deadly cloud loomed over the closed satellite town of Chelyabinsk-40. And only by sheer luck did it not spread any farther: the weather was windless.
How the chemical plant was built
The construction of «Mayak» proceeded at a frantic pace with the help of Komsomol members who came here at the call of their hearts – and prisoners from corrective labor colonies. It should be noted that qualified specialists were very reluctant to relocate to the new site. They understood perfectly well the danger they would face at this top-secret facility.
Safety procedures, it seems, existed only on paper. In the perpetual rush, this matter was deemed not such a necessary or essential condition for normal operation. And when production was launched, radioactive waste was dumped straight into the Techa River. Conveniently, the «Mayak» plant had been built on its banks. After complaints from residents of local villages, as well as out of fear of leaking secrets, the plant's managers decided to dump production waste into Lake Karachay. The rest was stored in enormous metal barrels under concrete in underground storage facilities.
The tragedy
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Alas, from the very beginning none of the higher-ups was able to soberly assess the scale of the tragedy that had occurred. Urgent measures needed to be taken to deal with the accident, but they dragged their feet – and lost precious time. And work at the plant, as usual, continued, and on top of that all the young people were sent off to seasonal field work. The local residents were completely unaware, not suspecting that they had found themselves in a deadly trap.
Only a week later did the emergency evacuation of people begin. Unfortunately, by that point the radioactive dust had already engulfed an area of 700 sq. km. The villages near the «Mayak» plant quickly emptied after the residents were removed. It was decided to raze the dwellings and all the structures to the ground in order to reduce radiation.
An entire village forgotten
And here it's worth mentioning the tragedy of the village of Tatarskaya Karabolka. In the hurry, it was simply forgotten. The settlement had been entered on the list of those to be evacuated, but no one ever removed the people! And they were doomed to a terrible, agonizing existence. Of four thousand people, around four hundred residents survived. And every one of them has a cancer – the consequence of living alongside deadly radiation, which spared no one and slowly led them to their deaths.
250 thousand military and civilian rescuers took part in dealing with the aftermath of the Kyshtym disaster. In memory of the heroic deed of these people, who sacrificed their health and lives, a stele has been erected in the town of Kyshtym.
The aftermath
The consequences of the Ural man-made catastrophe were truly horrific. And traces of this tragedy are being discovered even today. The surrounding nature suffered, with mutant animals appearing in it and deformed fish in the rivers. In the 1990s, everyone was shocked by a terrible discovery near Kyshtym. During excavations, the remains of a premature, deformed child were found. Later it would be called the «Kyshtym dwarf». It would serve as a sad reminder of the nuclear explosion in Chelyabinsk-40, which leaves black, mournful, and hideous marks on people. By the way, not far from these places, children with physical defects are still being born into young families even in our time.
It looks like a catastrophe happened: this strange cloud frightened the residents of Kazan to death
