After the Chernobyl disaster, our attitude towards the peaceful atom has changed dramatically. Now we no longer consider him a safe and harmless friend of man, as he was characterized in the fertile Soviet times. In the era of glasnost, we unexpectedly discovered that, it turns out, even before the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, at the enterprises and scientific centers of the Soviet Union, there were more than once emergencies related to the use of nuclear materials and technologies. And they ended not only in material damage, but also in human casualties.
Liquidators from Krasniy Sormovo
One of the most serious tragedies of this kind happened on January 18, 1970 at the Krasnoye Sormovo plant (at that time - the Gorky region, now Nizhny Novgorod), where the seventh Project 670 Skat nuclear submarine was being built. During hydraulic tests of the primary circuit of the nuclear submarine's power plant, when it was on the slipway of the mechanical assembly shop, an unauthorized launch of the VM-4 reactor unexpectedly occurred. At an exorbitant power, it worked for only 10-15 seconds, after which a thermal explosion occurred in it, and the reactor was partially destroyed. The explosion immediately killed 12 installers. But at that moment there were at least 150 workers in the assembly room, and about 1,500 more people behind the thin partition of the workshop. They all fell under the radioactive release,the total radiation level of which reached 60 thousand roentgens (75 thousand curies).
It was possible to avoid contamination of the area around the enterprise due to the closed nature of this workshop, but at the time of the accident, radioactive water was discharged into the Volga. Six victims of the ejection, the most severe, were immediately taken to a specialized Moscow clinic, where three of them with a diagnosis of acute radiation sickness died within a week. Only the next day, they began to wash the rest of the irradiated workers with special solutions, and their clothes and shoes were collected and burned. However, this measure did not lead to an improvement in the situation at the plant, since it is impossible to reduce the radiation level by fire, and the ash from clothes will retain radiation for another tens of years.
All participants and witnesses of the incident, without exception, were given a non-disclosure agreement for 25 years. On the same day, 450 people, having learned about the incident, quit their jobs. The rest had to participate in the work to eliminate the consequences of the accident, which continued until April 24 of the same year. In total, over a thousand people took part in them. Of the tools they were given only buckets, mops and rags, and as protective equipment - a gauze bandage and rubber gloves. For participation in liquidation work, everyone was paid extra 50 rubles a day. By January 2005, 380 of these people remained alive, by 2012 - less than 300, and all of them were invalids of I and II groups. None of them received any state awards for their participation in those works. Now the liquidators of that accident receive a monthly payment of 750 rubles.
Proton impact
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The very fact that in closed "atomic" research institutes there are also emergencies, became obvious to everyone even from the feature film "Nine Days of One Year". But for a long time the country did not even suspect that on July 13, 1978, at the Institute of High Energy Physics near Moscow, Anatoly Bugorsky, an employee of this institute, did not have a fictional, but a very real accident. Meanwhile, on that day, due to a failure in the security system, Bugorsky's head was pierced by an intense beam of protons that came out of the U-70, the largest accelerator at that time, and had an energy of 70 billion (!) Electron-volts. The radiation dose received by the physicist from this beam at its entrance was 200 thousand roentgens.
Although it is believed that a single dose of radiation of 600 roentgens and above for a person is fatal, Bugorsky nevertheless remained alive and even later said that when the protons passed through his head, he felt a bright flash in his eyes, but there was no pain. The beam entered his occipital region, completely destroying the skin, bone and brain tissue throughout the affected area. Immediately after this incident, Bugorsky was taken to a specialized radiological clinic in Moscow, where doctors prepared for the worst. However, the physicist, as if bewitched, after this radiation stroke not only recovered, but even defended his Ph. D. thesis two years later, prepared even before the accident, although he stopped hearing with his left ear. Now Bugorsky continues his scientific work at the same institute.
Over Canada, the sky is blue
There were also cases when radiation accidents that began at a secret Soviet facility; then affected foreign countries. In particular, on January 24, 1978, the Soviet satellite Kosmos-954, launched four months earlier in the interests of the maritime space reconnaissance system, fell into Canada after a sudden loss of communication. As a result, it turned out to be declassified the fact that this satellite had a nuclear power plant on board, which collapsed during the fall and contaminated more than 100 thousand square kilometers of Canada's Northwest Territories with radiation. But since these places are practically deserted and there are no cities or large settlements, no one was injured in the incident. In search of the wreckage of the device, American and Canadian special forces took part,who managed to find more than 100 fragments of it with a total weight of 65 kilograms. The radioactivity of these objects ranged from a few milliroentgens to 200 roentgens per hour. The government of the USSR admitted the fact of its guilt and offered Canada assistance in clearing the territory, but Canada not only refused, but did not even return the remains of the satellite to the Soviet Union, which violated international regulations. As a result, the USSR paid the affected party $ 3 million, but it was not possible to find out the reason for the satellite failure and its uncontrolled fall. After this incident, our developers had to give up launching such objects into space for almost three years in order to improve their radiation safety system. The government of the USSR admitted the fact of its guilt and offered Canada assistance in clearing the territory, but Canada not only refused, but did not even return the remains of the satellite to the Soviet Union, which violated international regulations. As a result, the USSR paid the affected party $ 3 million, but it was not possible to find out the reason for the satellite failure and its uncontrolled fall. After this incident, our developers had to give up launching such objects into space for almost three years in order to improve their radiation safety system. The government of the USSR admitted the fact of its guilt and offered Canada assistance in clearing the territory, but Canada not only refused, but did not even return the remains of the satellite to the Soviet Union, which violated international regulations. As a result, the USSR paid the affected party $ 3 million, but it was not possible to find out the reason for the satellite failure and its uncontrolled fall. After this incident, our developers had to give up launching such objects into space for almost three years in order to improve their radiation safety system.but it was not possible to find out the reason for the satellite failure and its uncontrolled fall. After this incident, our developers had to give up launching such objects into space for almost three years in order to improve their radiation safety system.but it was not possible to find out the reason for the satellite failure and its uncontrolled fall. After this incident, our developers had to give up launching such objects into space for almost three years in order to improve their radiation safety system.
Killed instantly
It is believed that the most severe radiation accident for the entire existence of the domestic nuclear fleet was the incident that happened on August 10, 1985 at the Zvezda shipyard (Primorsky Territory, Chazhma Bay, Shkotovo-22 settlement). On that day, reloading of nuclear fuel began on the K-431 submarine, which was at the pier. As it turned out later, these works were carried out in violation of the requirements of nuclear safety and technology, since they used non-standard lifting devices. The starboard reactor was able to restart normally. But at that moment, when the rise (the so-called "undermining") of the cover of the second reactor began and a compensating grid was lifted out of it, a torpedo boat rushed past the submarine at a high speed, which exceeded the permitted speed in the bay. The wave he raised caused the floating crane to wobble,holding the lid. The grate and absorbers rose above the critical level, the reactor went into starting mode - and as a result, a strong thermal explosion occurred inside the boat, and then a fire began, which lasted two and a half hours.
At 1000-degree temperatures, 10 officers and sailors who were refueling nuclear fuel instantly died. Later, in different parts of the harbor, only small fragments of their bodies were found, thrown out by an explosion from the boat's hatch. Only a part of a finger with a gold wedding ring remained from one of the officers, by which it was subsequently possible to determine that in the center of the explosion the radiation level was 90 thousand roentgens per hour. The nuclear fuel ejected into the atmosphere was blown away by the wind, and then it fell out on the ground, forming a radioactive strip up to 30 kilometers long, which crossed the Danube Peninsula in a north-western direction and reached the shore of the Ussuri Bay. The total activity of the emission was about 7 megacurie, which is a very large figure.
During the accident and during the elimination of its consequences, 290 people were exposed to radiation, of which 10 were later diagnosed with acute radiation sickness, and another 39 - radiation reaction. After extinguishing the fire, the burnt-out hull of the K-431 boat was towed to a remote bay for long-term storage with the help of pontoons. Together with it, due to high radiation pollution, the K-42 submarine "Rostovsky Komsomolets" of project 627A, which was standing nearby, was also declared unsuitable for further operation. And at the scene of the accident, a monument was later erected to ten dead officers and sailors.
Valery EROFEEV