The causes and consequences of the nuclear disaster at the Mayak Production Association facility in 1957

Abstract

From the onset of the post-WWII nuclear arms race until 1989, the strict secrecy surrounding the Soviet military-industrial complex prevented credible information from emerging regarding any serious radiological accidents that may have occurred within the Soviet Union. In this information vacuum, Zhores Medvedev, an exiled Soviet biologist, was the sole individual who, in the 1970s, drew attention to the possibility of a 1957 nuclear disaster in the Urals through scientific inference; according to his hypothesis, an explosion in an underground radioactive waste storage facility had contaminated a vast area. Although the international community had already become aware of the 1986 Chernobyl events, the details of the 'Kyshtym disaster' remained hidden until the era of Glasnost, when Soviet authorities finally decided to release the relevant data. In 1989, during an event organized by the IAEA, it became clear to the world that Medvedev was right. There really was a separate and secret nuclear facility in the southern Urals where serial human omissions led to an INES 6 event on 29 September 1957 at Mayak Production Association (PA) near the town of Kyshtym in the Chelyabinsk oblast.