Kyshtym (russian: Кышты́м) is a
town
A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world.
Origin and use
The word "town" shares an o ...
in
Chelyabinsk Oblast
Chelyabinsk Oblast (russian: Челя́бинская о́бласть, ''Chelyabinskaya oblast'') is a federal subject (an oblast) of Russia in the Ural Mountains region, on the border of Europe and Asia. Its administrative center is the ...
,
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...
, located on the eastern slopes of the Southern
Ural Mountains
The Ural Mountains ( ; rus, Ура́льские го́ры, r=Uralskiye gory, p=ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈɡorɨ; ba, Урал тауҙары) or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western ...
northwest of
Chelyabinsk
Chelyabinsk ( rus, Челя́бинск, p=tɕɪˈlʲæbʲɪnsk, a=Ru-Chelyabinsk.ogg; ba, Силәбе, ''Siläbe'') is the administrative center and largest city of Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia. It is the seventh-largest city in Russia, with a ...
, near the town of
Ozyorsk. Population: 36,000 (1970).
History
Kyshtym was established by the
Demidov
The House of Demidov (russian: Деми́довы) also Demidoff, was a prominent Russian noble family during the 18th and 19th centuries. Originating in the city of Tula in the 17th century, the Demidovs found success through metal products, a ...
s in 1757 around two factories for production of cast iron and steel. The city emblem shows the
Kyshtym Manor House, a Palladian residence of Nikita Demidov Jr.
According to
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 and a member of the Republican Party, holding office during the onset of the Gre ...
, a small iron industry had existed there "for one hundred and fifty years", which produced a secret process for generating sheet iron "unusually resistant to rust." The process "consisted of alternately heating the sheets and sweeping them when hot with a wet pine-bough. The effect was to create a coating of iron oxide which was rust-resistant."
Baron Meller-Zakomelsky's Kyshtym estate became of interest to foreign capital, after the
1905 Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution of 1905,. also known as the First Russian Revolution,. occurred on 22 January 1905, and was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. The mass unrest was directed again ...
and subsequent depression. A British consortium around
Charles Leslie brought in the mining entrepreneur
Leslie Urquhart, investing in Russian oil and minerals. In 1908 Leslie became Chairman of the Kyshtym Corporation, for mining.
In 1910, Hoover's American company became involved.
The copper, iron and steel industry associated with mining in the area was modernized. Copper production, using pyritic smelting, eventually reached 25,000,000 pounds a year.
The corporate situation was already complex, when the American interests became involved, because of tensions between the British interests, which were related by cross-holdings.
In 1911
Alfred Chester Beatty visited Kyshtym, on behalf of the American interests. By 1912 the future direction was set for investment in the Urals, with Beatty and Urquhart allied, and the British group around Leslie excluded.
Kyshtym was granted town status in 1934.
Administrative and municipal status
Within the
framework of administrative divisions, it is, together with twelve
rural localities, incorporated as the
Town
A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world.
Origin and use
The word "town" shares an o ...
of Kyshtym—an administrative unit with the status equal to that of the
districts
A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivisions ...
.
[Resolution #161] As a
municipal division, the Town of Kyshtym is incorporated as Kyshtymsky Urban Okrug.
Nuclear disaster
Kyshtym is near the
Ozyorsk nuclear complex, also known as "
Mayak
The Mayak Production Association (russian: Производственное объединение «Маяк», , from 'lighthouse') is one of the biggest nuclear facilities in the Russian Federation, housing a reprocessing plant. The closest ...
" ("lighthouse" in Russian), where on September 29, 1957, a violent explosion involving dry nitrate and acetate salts in a waste tank containing highly radioactive waste, contaminated an area of more than 15,000 square kilometers (Ozyorsk was the town built around the Mayak combine, but it was a
closed city, which was not marked on maps, thus making Kyshtym the nearest town to the location of the disaster). The explosion resulted from a failure of the cooling system of the tank.
There was a release of 740
PBq of
fission product
Nuclear fission products are the atomic fragments left after a large atomic nucleus undergoes nuclear fission. Typically, a large nucleus like that of uranium fissions by splitting into two smaller nuclei, along with a few neutrons, the release ...
s, approximately 10% of which was dispersed into the atmosphere.
Cerium-144
Naturally occurring cerium (58Ce) is composed of 4 stable isotopes: 136Ce, 138Ce, 140Ce, and 142Ce, with 140Ce being the most abundant (88.48% natural abundance) and the only one theoretically stable; 136Ce, 138Ce, and 142Ce are predicted to under ...
and
Zirconium-95 (both relatively short lived isotopes with a half life of 285 and 64 days respectively) made up 91% of the release. There was 1 PBq of
Sr-90, and 13 TBq of
Cs-137. The contaminated zone, called East Urals Radioactive Trace (EURT), measuring 300 x 50 km was contaminated by more than 4 kBq/m
2 of Sr-90. The global fallout of Sr-90 was about 2 kBq/m
2. An area measuring 17 km
2 was contaminated by about 100 MBq Sr-90/m
2.
There were 270,000 inhabitants of the area. Mass evacuation was carried out as the critical contamination resulted from Sr-90 with a half-life of 28.8 years. About 800 km
2 of land were taken out of use, and 82% of this area has now been taken into use again for forestry and farming. However, evacuation was limited to the nearest settlements leading to more than 1000 acknowledged victims. It was estimated in 1990 that at this time, around 10,000 people lived in areas where the level of ambient radiation was more than quadruple that of the average in Chernobyl's restricted area after 1986.
Eesti Ekspress
''Eesti Ekspress'' (''Estonian Express'') is an Estonian weekly newspaper.
Founded in 1989, ''Eesti Ekspress'' was the first politically independent newspaper in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic during the Soviet control of Estonia.
T ...
2 May 2009 9:29
Maailma kõige ohtlikum paik
/ref>
The Kyshtym accident was largely concealed by the Soviet government until 1980, when the Soviet biologist Zhores Medvedev revealed its existence.
File:«Белый дом»1757 г.jpg, Demidov Palace, Kyshtym
File:Kyshtym_mountain.jpg, Mount Yegoza near Kyshtym
File:Kyshtym_tower.jpg, Kyshtym radio and TV tower
File:Kyshtym church.jpg, Church of the Nativity of Christ
References
Notes
Sources
*
External links
Photo gallery of Kyshtym
{{Authority control
Cities and towns in Chelyabinsk Oblast
Yekaterinburgsky Uyezd