Kyshtym

city Kyshtym Кыштым flag coat of arms Federal district Ural Oblast Chelyabinsk Urban district Kyshtym mayor Vyacheslav Shchekochikhin Founded 1757 City since 1934 surface 46  km² population 38,942 inhabitants (as of Oct. 14, 2010) Population density 847 inhabitants / km² Height of the center 260  m Time zone UTC + 5 Telephone code (+7) 35151 Post Code 45687x License Plate 74, 174 OKATO 75 434 Geographical location Coordinates 55 ° 42 ′  N , 60 ° 33 ′  E Coordinates: 55 ° 42 ′ 0 ″  N , 60 ° 33 ′ 0 ″  E

Location in the western part of Russia

Location in Chelyabinsk Oblast

List of cities in Russia

Kyschtym ( Russian Кыштым ) is a Russian city ​​with 38,942 inhabitants (as of October 14, 2010) in the Chelyabinsk Oblast in the southern Urals , about 15 km southwest of the " closed city " Osjorsk . 15 km to the east is the Mayak nuclear center (formerly known as Chelyabinsk-65). The name “closed city” comes from the fact that, due to the top secret military activities in connection with the development of nuclear weapons, access to the city was forbidden for the normal population and the city was not shown on maps.

history

Church in Kyshtym

The place was founded in 1757 when an iron foundry was being built. The city name is a hydronym of the river of the same name, whose origin is believed to be in the Turkic languages . In 1934 Kyschtym received city rights. The POW camp 180 for German prisoners of war of the Second World War was located in Kyschtym .

In 1989 Kyshtym hit the headlines for the disclosure of details about a nuclear accident in 1957 (see Kyshtym accident ). It was not until 32 years later than the informed in the Soviet Union after the Chernobyl disaster newly created Ministry for Atomic Energy , the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about the disaster that already in 1976 by biochemist and dissident Zhores Alexandrovich Medvedev a emigrated from the Soviet Union scientists, became known. However, since Medvedev had wrongly stated a nuclear chain reaction as the cause of the accident - in reality a chemical reaction was the cause - his statements were questioned by scientists and ignored.

After a failure of the cooling system in the course of 1956 and wrong decisions by the staff, an explosion occurred on September 29, 1957 in a tank containing highly radioactive liquid waste . Large amounts of radioactive substances, in particular strontium -90 and cesium -137, were released. In the official Soviet report is of two million Curie (corresponding to 74 Petabecquerel ) released radioactivity of the question. According to official information, an area of ​​around 1,000 square kilometers was so heavily contaminated that all of its 10,000 residents had to be evacuated. How many people died immediately in the "Kyshtym accident" is still not known.

The radioactive waste generated in the industry of the Kyshtym region was largely discharged into Lake Karachay , which today threatens to come into contact with the groundwater currents of the Ob and Tetscha rivers . For the future, it cannot be ruled out that the radioactive contamination will spread to the Arctic Ocean as a result.

Population development

year	Residents
1939	27,790
1959	34,302
1970	36.096
1979	39,830
1989	42,852
2002	41,929
2010	38,942

Note: census data

sons and daughters of the town

• Wladilen Trenogin (1931–2013), mathematician and university professor
• Nikolai Pusanow (1938–2008), biathlete and Olympic champion

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Itogi Vserossijskoj perepisi naselenija 2010 goda. Tom 1. Čislennostʹ i razmeščenie naselenija (Results of the All-Russian Census 2010. Volume 1. Number and distribution of the population). Tables 5 , pp. 12-209; 11 , pp. 312–979 (download from the website of the Federal Service for State Statistics of the Russian Federation)
2. ↑ Maschke, Erich (ed.): On the history of the German prisoners of war of the Second World War. Verlag Ernst and Werner Gieseking, Bielefeld 1962–1977.
3. ↑ Henning Sietz: Das Menetekel von Majak , Die Zeit , article from August 16, 2007, No. 34, p. 70, last accessed on August 9, 2010

Web links

Commons : Kyschtym  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Süddeutsche Zeitung: The hidden supergame
• Kyschtym on mojgorod.ru (Russian)