Karachay Lake

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Karachay Lake
Mayak satellite map.jpg
Satellite image of Mayak with Lake Karachay (V-9)
Geographical location Chelyabinsk region , Russia
Data
Coordinates 55 ° 40 ′ 38 "  N , 60 ° 47 ′ 55"  E Coordinates: 55 ° 40 ′ 38 "  N , 60 ° 47 ′ 55"  E
Karachay Lake (Chelyabinsk Oblast)
Karachay Lake
surface 50 ha
Template: Infobox See / Maintenance / EVIDENCE AREA
The Chelyabinsk region within Russia

Lake Karachay ( Russian озеро Карача́й / ozero Karačaj ) is a lake in the southern Urals near the city of Kyshtym in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia . From 1951, the Soviet Union used Karachay as a storage facility for radioactive waste from Mayak , the nearby nuclear interim storage facility and the reprocessing plant near Osjorsk (then Chelyabinsk -40).

According to a report by the Worldwatch Institute on radioactive waste, Karachay is the "most polluted place" on earth. In 1990 the lake contained radioactive material with an activity of around 4.44 Exa - Becquerel (EBq), including 3.6 EBq from Cesium -137 (which corresponds to around 1.1 tons of the isotope with a half-life of 30 years) and 0.74 EBq from strontium -90 (of which around two thirds should have been left in 2009; however, new immissions are still being added). For comparison: the Chernobyl disaster released material with an activity between 5 and 12 EBq, which, however, was distributed over a much larger area.

history

Between 1949 and 1951, nuclear waste from the Mayak nuclear facility was initially only disposed of directly in the Tetscha river system. The consequences of radiation damage (including lung cancer and leukemia ) quickly appeared on a massive scale among the local population and the workers at the plant. In order to avoid this damage to health, the waste streams were gradually diverted to Lake Karachay from 1951 onwards. This practice lasted until 1953. After that, the waste began to be deposited in tanks, and discharges into the lake were significantly reduced. One of those tanks finally exploded in the 1957 Kyshtym disaster .

In the 1960s the lake began to dry up. Its surface shrank from 0.5  km² in 1951 to 0.15 km² at the end of 1993. After a drought, the wind carried radioactive dust away from the dry area in 1968 , which was previously covered by the lake, polluting half a million people and an area of 1,800 square kilometers with 185 Peta -Becquerel of radiation (five million curie ), a similar activity as in Hiroshima after the dropping of the atomic bomb Little Boy was released.

Between 1978 and 1986, the lake was filled with hollow concrete bodies and completely covered in 2015 to prevent further sediment movements.

The South Urals nuclear power plant , which has never been commissioned, is located near the lake .

Radiation exposure

Before or around 1991 the radiation exposure on the shore of the lake was in the most heavily exposed area at around 6 gray per hour. For unprotected people, this radiation would be fatal after just one hour. According to Russian scientists, anyone staying near the lake risks acute radiation sickness . It cannot be ruled out for the future that the water of the lake will come into contact with the Tetscha river and thus the Ob via groundwater currents . In this way, the radioactivity could also reach the Arctic Ocean .

Popular culture

The band Pain of Salvation released One Hour By The Concrete Lake, an album that deals with the pollution of the lake.

Much of the novel The Messiah Gene by James Rollins takes place in the area around the lake and deals with the dangers posed by its radioactivity.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c IAEA: Worldwide marine radioactivity studies (WOMARS): radionuclide levels in oceans and seas. Final Report 2005, p. 14.
  2. ^ Lenssen: Nuclear Waste: The Problem that Won't Go Away. Worldwatch Institute, Washington, DC, 1991: 15.
  3. ↑ grist.org: Meet the lake so polluted that spending an hour there would kill you (October 3, 2012)
  4. ↑ wentz.net: Chelyabinsk - The Most Contaminated Spot on the Planet ( Memento of October 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (October 3, 2012)
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g GlobalSecurity.org: Weapons of Mass Destruction - Chelyabinsk-65 / Ozersk
  6. ↑ a b Antenna.nl: PU production and contamination in the USSR
  7. ↑ Batelle.org: Russia's Plutonium ( Memento of October 4, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Video of the backfilling work , Youtube, accessed on June 5, 2012
  9. ↑ see literature: Cochran, Norris, and Suokko, p. 10 (or p. 518) below
  10. ↑ Sandia National Lab - Advanced Simulation and Computing Contamination Sites ( Memento December 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ Ask1.org: Mayak - Beacon of Nuclear Madness ( Memento from December 23, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  12. ↑ Werner Schuster: Book review "The Messiah Gene" . Retrieved September 28, 2010.