
A Radioactive Cloud Wafts Over Europe, with Russia as Chief Suspect - tim_sw
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/world/europe/radioactive-cloud-europe.html?_r=0
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topspin
It's Mayak. A far better story[1] by AFP about this matter names the village
of Argayash as the site of highest ruthenium-106 concentration, while
simultaneously managing to not drag in the obligatory 'russia hackers attack
democracy' angle. This village is a short distance from the main processing
facility of Rosatom's Mayak; site of several nuclear disasters and countless
lesser failures.

This is a media handling process. Rosatom previously denied everything. Now
they're acknowledging a little, but denying any culpability. Next they'll hint
at some industrial problem, not very severe. Then we'll learn it was rather
serious and had a body count and maybe local evacuations. So forth and so on.

[1] [https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-confirms-extremely-high-
re...](https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-confirms-extremely-high-readings-
radioactive-pollution-184627359.html)

~~~
wahern
Fascinating story about the early years of Mayak:
[https://www.thescreamonline.com/strange/strange08-01/chelyab...](https://www.thescreamonline.com/strange/strange08-01/chelyabinsk40.html)

    
    
      .... What each beheld was unlike anything he had ever seen.
      The small group was standing in an underground city,
      complete with streets, shops, pedestrians, and a building 
      that turned out to be the concert hall. About four stories 
      above was a ceiling with suspended lights to illuminate the 
      entire area. DB recalls the sensation of being in a vast 
      tunnel with sides too far apart to see.
    
      ...
    
      [T]he underground city was populated primarily by convicts
      who, instead of being sentenced to Siberia to 25 years of
      hard labor, had agreed to work in Chelyabinsk-40 for a
      lesser term of about five years. In actuality, it was a
      death sentence. No prisoner lived beyond five years of
      radiocative exposure—even less. As additional incentive,
      the stores were stocked with rare and exotic foods, premium
      wines and liquors, and expensive clothing and jewelry—all
      for ridiculously low prices. DB could not believe his eyes
      at the sight of goods that were unattainable and strickly
      forbidden otherwise.

~~~
topspin
If you'd like a mind blowing read find a copy of this:
[https://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Disaster-Urals-Zhores-
Medvede...](https://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Disaster-Urals-Zhores-
Medvedev/dp/0393334112)

Z. Medvedev is a Soviet dissident and exile that naively mentioned the Kyshtym
disaster in an interview not understanding that he would be roundly panned by
Western authorities in the nuclear industry and fellow travelers in Western
media. Being a legitimate and accomplished academic he valued his credibility
so he wrote a book to convince the world, using research papers published by
Soviet scientists and available in the open press, that the disaster actually
happened. He showed that the work in the papers could only have been conducted
given massive radioactive contamination over a wide area, despite deliberate
effort to obscure these circumstances. The cited papers would have been
blocked from publication had the Soviet censors understood what they were
reading, but they didn't, so the evidence accumulated. If anyone in the West
noticed prior to Medvedev sticking their noses in it they didn't bother to say
anything.

Years later the Soviets fessed up and vindicated Medvedev.

~~~
wahern
Interesting that the West still denied the Mayak incidents, even in the 1970s.

    
    
      Experts in Britain, the United States, France, and many
      other countries responded by denying my story and stating
      that such a thing was technically impossible. The earliest
      and most sharply worded rebuttal to my story came from the
      chairman of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, Sir
      John Hill. His interview with the Press Association
      published in the London Times on November 8, 1976, was
      reprinted in many European and American papers. He declared
      in the most high-handed fashion that my story was "rubbish".
    
      -- Zhores Medvedev, Nuclear Disaster in the Urals, p5
      (Amazon preview)

