Stand 1 hour at Lips Lake It Can Kill You

Although beautiful, Lake Karachay Russia is probably the last place on earth you want to visit. Just standing next to the mouth of the lake at this for an hour, will give you a dose of radiation equal to 600 X-rays, more than enough to kill you. At its peak, the lake is emitting more than 200,000 times the normal amount of radioactivity, due to improper disposal sad.

Lake Karachay in 1991



As quoted from versesofuniverse.blogspot.com, situated deep in the Ural Mountains of Russia, close to the border of modern Kazakhstan, Lake Karachay is located in the Mayak Production Association, one of the largest nuclear facilities (and most frequently leak) in the country. Built in the 1940s, after World War II, was one of the Mayak nuclear weapons plant of the most important Russian and inaccessible to foreigners for 45 years. But when President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree in 1992 that opened the region to foreign visits. Scientists gain direct access to the area was declared the most polluted areas on the planet. It seems for a long period of obscurity, Mayak nuclear sites that are experiencing a lot of nuclear accidents, some nearly as severe as Chernobyl crisis.

This map shows the location of Lake Karachay Chelyabinsk and surrounding area, which is still badly contaminated nuclear waste
The Mayak nuclear engineers seem to dispose of radioactive waste into the nearby Techa river regularly. Liquid waste carelessly discarded is a mixture of radioactive elements such as Strontium-90 and Cesium-137, each with a half-life of about 30 years.

Damage caused by chaotic management of nuclear waste was pretty terrible - the whole Chelyabinsk region was found to have a 21 percent increase in cases of cancer, a 25 percent increase in birth defects, and a 41 percent increase in leukemia. 50 percent of the population of productive age became sterile (sterile). Of the 40 villages on the banks of the river downstream from Mayak, 23 had to be evacuated.

In fact, the river Techa become so contaminated that 65 percent of the population in the village Metlino suffer radiation sickness. And although the cause is unclear, doctors prevented to mention radiation in their diagnosis for a long time. So they are forced to label the disease as 'specific diseases'. Rather than pay attention to the damage that occurred, the Mayak engineers is eager to make nuclear arms race with the West, so it seems they do not pay attention to the safety of people around. As a result, several major accidents occurred at the nuclear facility in the fifties and sixties.

In the mid-fifties, they finally decided to stop nuclear waste into lakes nearby, while most of the damage has occurred. Instead, they began to enter the sewage into a row of vats. And in September 1957 - waste bins exploded with a force equivalent to about 85 tons of TNT, spewing about 70 tons of radioactive waste a mile high.

The ruins of a nuclear waste storage tank explosion at Mayak nuclear facility in 1957



The resulting dust cloud spread isotope cesium and strontium into an area of ​​over 9,000 square miles, and can affect the food supply of almost 300,000 Soviet citizens. But the Mayak engineers do not pay attention to the damage caused. With the destruction of sewage systems, they begin to dispose of radioactive waste into Lake Karachay. The engineers as though optimistic that whatever they waste in this lake will remain there permanently, because the lake has no surface outlet.

For ten years, assuming they seemed to prove true, but after a severe drought struck the Chelyabinsk, the lake slowly began to dry, exposing the radioactive sediment at the bottom. Toxic dust blowing in the wind spread everywhere, covers about 900 square miles of land with strontium and cesium, along with other harmful elements.

As a result of all contamination during the explosion in 1957 and the drought of 1967, most of the Chelyabinsk region remained uninhabited to this day. Experts have estimated that approximately one billion gallons of groundwater has been contaminated with the 5 megacuries radionuclides and even today, the locals still do not know the actual level of the radioisotope in the water houses and crops and plantations that become their food and drink daily.

Lake Karachai - today the lake is mostly covered with concrete. In 1990 standing on the beach for more than one hour would be deadly


1940: Chelyabinsk region is developed as a weapons factory when the Soviet weapon factories move away from the Nazi invasion

1949-1956: liquid waste from Mayak nuclear complex dumped into the river system Techa-Iset-Tobol

1957: nuclear waste storage tank explosion at Mayak nuclear complex

1967: Lake Karachay dries spreading radioactive dust in Chelyabinsk

1990: Scientists measure radiation at the edge of the lake and found that radiation there is enough to kill a person in an hour

1992: Russian President Boris Yeltsin took the decision to allow foreign scientists visiting the area

2003: Mayak nuclear facility eventually revoked the license for the disposal of radioactive waste

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