Ask 10 adults if they’ve ever heard of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 and I’d be confident saying you’d get at least nine that have. I’d even wager on a perfect 10 out of 10 depending on the demographic petitioned.
Its continental radioactive contamination implications and relative recent occurrence has it documented as the greatest human-fabricated environmental disaster ever; Chernobyl is easily the most severe nuclear disaster in history based on its fallout that affected huge populations of not only the Ukraine where it originated, but also massive swaths of Europe and Asia. Its reactor explosion – caused indirectly by human error (or perhaps more accurately, ineptitude) – had the potential to permanently alter habitation of the two continents and beyond based on the radioactive elements that entered the atmosphere. Countless deaths, birth defects and long-term cancers in the region have been attributed to Chernobyl.
The second-worst nuclear incident in history occurred only 10 years ago at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, following a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami that rocked the area in 2011. This disaster forced the evacuation of over 150,000 people, and nearly caused the evacuation of nearby Tokyo itself, which would have been an incredible undertaking.
Both Chernobyl and Fukushima are considered ‘Level 7’ incidents – or ‘major accidents’ – on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES). There is only one Level 6 (‘serious accident’) recorded on the INES database, which was nearly as devastating as Chernobyl and happened about 30 years before it.
The Mayak (Kyshtym) disaster occurred in the Ural Mountains region of the Soviet Union on Sept. 29, 1957. Mayak was a plutonium production site used to engineer nuclear weapons for the Red Army, as the Cold War with the United States really began to take off. In terms of total radioactivity released, Mayak nearly rivalled Chernobyl on the disaster scale, but strangely it’s an incident that you never really hear about. We can thank our old friends the Soviet government and their ultra hush-hush clandestine ways about relaying information for that.
The Mayak disaster occurred when an improperly-stored underground tank containing highly volatile nuclear waste exploded. The detonation is said to have been in comparison to around 100 tons of TNT, and it contaminated thousands of square kilometres of the Eastern Urals, now contained within what is known as the Eastern Ural Radioactive Trace (the Soviet government designated the area as a nature reserve in 1968 to cover up the extent of the fallout and eventual population abandonment). Despite its immense explosion and the human populations in the vicinity that were affected (estimated to be tens of thousands of people), the Soviet government managed to keep it largely under wraps within Russian borders for 20 years. Amazing in itself.
Despite vague reports of a nuclear incident that were picked up by western media outlets, the true extent of the accident only became known because of Soviet dissidents speaking out years later. It wasn’t until after Chernobyl that the U.S.S.R.’s government began declassifying records of Mayak. Again, decades later.
In terms of the villages and towns within the affected area, evacuations were slow. Some didn’t happen for over a year after the incident, and even then residents were not given full disclosure as to why they were being moved. The total number of casualties and radiation poisoning deaths related to Mayak may never be known, but it has been documented that the plant had already been dumping waste into surrounding lakes and rivers for many years before the accident occurred. By the early 1950s, one such body of water – Lake Karachay – was deemed the most polluted spot on Earth after being used extensively for open-air storage of radioactive waste. Just attempting to understand the environmental implications of this alone boggles my mind.
Much of the blame for the Mayak incident was placed on senior officials at the plant, with improper storage procedures being followed combined with a general misunderstanding of the volatile nature of the materials involved during those very early days of the new nuclear age. Many Soviet facilities like Mayak were built hastily following the Second World War in an attempt to rival American output of nuclear weapons, and the blind drive to create more ‘nukes’ than their adversary during the arms race. Even though in short order just a fraction of their stockpile contained enough atomic payload to destroy the world 100 times over. Prior to strategic nuclear arms reduction treaties signed between the U.S. and the Soviet Union beginning in the late 1980s, each nation had a staggering 25,000 and 40,000 warheads, respectively. Approximately.
Today, Russian nuclear warheads allegedly still number over 6,000; no doubt many are survivors of the U.S.S.R. era and the arms race scramble that in turn led to incidents like Mayak in 1957. On the other side of the coin, it’s reported that the U.S. still has well over 5,000 nuclear warheads.
Despite the Cold War being over for 30 years, these deadly nuclear stockpiles remain as the best example of its surviving legacy. Given the highly-contaminated ‘exclusion zones’ that exist in areas surrounding disaster sites like Chernobyl, it goes without saying that it would be in the best interest of the world powers that are caretakers of these weapons to keep them dormant in their missile silos. Estimates on when humans can safely return to living in these radioactive areas still vary anywhere from dozens of years to several hundred.
Thanks for reading and I’ll see you back here in a fortnight.
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This is a bi-weekly opinion column; for question or comment contact Dan McNee at dmcnee@midwesternnewspapers.com.
