The first nuclear disaster in Russia, of which very few people know, through the eyes of an eyewitness

Press secretary of the energy program Greenpeace Russia Konstantin Fomin wrote a story about the first nuclear disaster on Russian territory. The story is based on the words of the author’s grandmother, Taisiya Fomina, who witnessed this tragedy in 1957.

Фото: Depositphotos

During the 29 years before Chernobyl, the secret chemical plant Mayak in the southern Urals experienced the first nuclear disaster in Russia, of which very few people know.

The school does not teach this, but the parents of my father, Taisiya and Vasily Fomin, built this enterprise, and after the accident my grandfather worked there as a liquidator. Therefore, I had atomic tales: as my grandmother almost drove a motorcycle to Kurchatov’s dacha, and as a high school student, she died from radiation because the neighbors put a radioactive baby cot on the floor above.

City that is not on the map

After completing the courses, the construction planners offered my grandmother a choice of four industrial sites where construction was carried out under the direction of the Ministry of the Interior.

So she got to the closed city of Chelyabinsk-40 in the southern Urals (now renamed Ozersk). Then she was told: "You will go to a city that is not on the map." She was very surprised - as it is, the city is, but on the map it is not.

Upon the arrival of her and her three girlfriends, an employee of the regime service met and explained that this was a secure city, and they would work on a closed construction site. He warned that they would certainly want to share with their relatives where they came and what they saw, but they need to write very modestly - “they arrived well, everything was all right”. Describe what kind of nature here, in any case impossible. It became scary that they were in such an unusual situation.

After giving a couple of days for the arrangement, they were then invited to an interview and told that they were to work in a closed area somewhere in 20 km from the city, where they would be taken by bus. It was also impossible to walk freely around the territory. Even in the dining room they went strictly along a certain route. What is built around? Ask unnecessary questions. You know your site - and work, carry out the tasks.

They did not even know the purpose of the object that they themselves had built. It was a huge building, more than 500 meters in length, almost completely hidden under the ground, with a small elevated part. However, there were already many completed and existing facilities around - the company had been operating since the end of the 1940s. Later they learned that they were building a site for obtaining plutonium for atomic weapons.

At first, my grandmother lived in a dormitory, in the “home of young specialists”. With her future husband, they worked on the same site. We went to work together, came back together, went to the cinema together. In the basement of the hostel there was a lounge where they arranged dances.

Life was moving forward. Soon they got married, a year later my uncle Sergey was born to them. Then they lived with the shares in a two-room apartment. Even in the very first year they were told that they would not be welcome to go on vacation. Those who remained, paid extra to vacation 40%. And they did not complain: there was a beautiful Ural nature around, clear lakes, recreation facilities.

There were other entertainments: my grandmother worked at the motorcyclists club and was the only girl there. Once in training for races on rough terrain, she lost a landmark in a pine forest. When we finally managed to go on the road, we faced a gate ... and a soldier with a rifle at the ready: “Stop! Where are you going? Do you know that you can’t drive here? ”

At that moment a black car pulled up, from which the driver got out and asked the soldier what was the matter.

- Yes, I detained you.

The second door opened. A man appeared with a long beard that looked like a shovel, and her grandmother explained to him that she was lost.

“Yes heard, heard. You are here all the time tarahtit on their motorcycles, prevent to rest here, "- he replied and suggested how to go to the club.

When she told this to her comrades, they laughed: “Where did you get this? Didn’t she go to Kurchatov's house? ”

She was the only builder in the section. The others worked at the plant and knew that the “father” of the Soviet atomic bomb often came to Chelyabinsk-40 to manage the project.

But soon everyone was not laughing.

If you can take the child away - take it away.

The trouble came unexpectedly. On Sunday, 29 September 1957, the grandfather persuaded his grandmother to go to football. When there was an explosion from the industrial site, they did not attach much importance to this. The soils there were rocky, and they were often blown up, because otherwise excavators could not work. Football ended, and they quietly returned home.

On Monday morning, a neighbor ran in to them and said that the 15 collection took place minutes earlier, and the women were told not to go to work. After lunch, my grandfather returned very gloomy: “We were assembled, they said that some kind of production malfunction had occurred, that the KGB workers would figure it out, and they let me go home. Until the situation becomes clear, complete secrecy. ”

But within a week, rumors began to seep into the city, and about a month later they learned what had happened. About a kilometer from the site where they worked, there were concrete tanks with a volume of about 300 cubic meters, filled with radioactive waste. They were also called "banks of perpetual storage." Before the accident, the grandmother and grandfather did not even know about the existence of these objects.

The experience of storing radioactive waste was then minimal. According to the official version, the cooling system failed in one of the cans. The waste began to heat up, and there was an explosion of such strength that it threw aside the concrete “cover” of a meter thickness. Radioactive substances were thrown a kilometer or more up and began to be blown away.

At that time, several thousand soldiers and prisoners worked on the territory of “Mayak”. Radioactive pollution has covered both the barracks of military builders and the camp. In the first days, people began to take out, although some of the soldiers were left for liquidation. Not evacuated and Chelyabinsk-40.

Fortunately, the winds were directed in the opposite direction from the city, and the main train, ejected by the explosion, did not hit it. 90% pollution fell on the industrial site itself, the rest was carried to the northeast. This is how the East-Ural radioactive trace appeared - a strip of pollution about 300-350 kilometers in length.

The city was considered relatively clean, although mud was already dragged from the industrial site. Across the courtyard on Mendeleev Street, where my family lived then, there were many workers who were returning from the industrial site, and on their shoes and clothes there was that “industrial dirt”. After the accident, dosimetrists walked around the city and work was being done on decontamination. The kindergarten on Mendeleev was closed, and in the spring of next year 40, see the soil on the street cut off and taken to the burial ground.

A familiar doctor then slowly told them: "If there is an opportunity to take the child away, take it away from the trouble to the mainland."

And Sergey was sent to my great-grandmother in Novosibirsk. But not everyone managed to save their children.

As a result of the disaster, 272 000 people in 217 settlements were exposed. A radioactive trail 30-50 wide kilometers stretched 300 kilometers. 1 000 Sq. km were withdrawn from economic circulation.

Misfortune overtook Tatyana Chebykina, with whom her grandmother studied and came to Chelyabinsk-40. She also married a builder from their company, Ivan Butrimovich, and they had a daughter. They lived nearby, in a three-story brick house. Directly beneath them was the family of the head of the secret part of the construction department, by the name of Shubodёrov, who also had a daughter, but older in the 9 or 10 class.

And suddenly the daughter of the chief of the secret part fell ill. It was impossible to determine the diagnosis: the girl melted before her eyes and died. Then Butrimovich's daughter fell ill. And Tatiana was not herself: she was lying on the sick-list, then she took time off, she barely went.

Finally, it occurred to someone to check the house for radioactive contamination. Shuboderov was told that he had a very high background in the apartment, which was very strange, because he had never worked at the industrial site. And when we went to the second floor, it turned out that there "rings" even stronger.

Ivan was asked: "What do you have in the house?" We looked - we found something insignificant on the shoes. Then we went into the children's room, and there the dosimeter went off scale by the bed.

- Where did you get this crib from?!

And the beds in Chelyabinsk-40 were then in short supply, because in the city there were many young people with newborn children. And Butrimovich ordered this bed to friends at the industrial site. The tubes from which they welded it turned out to be radioactive.

Soon the daughter of Butrimovich also died. Here they began to sound the alarm - it means a mess in the city. So dragged into the city not only on his feet, but also in his pocket. They began to investigate and found other similar cases.

Tatiana was also buried. She was treated for a long time and had a blood transfusion several times, but nothing helped. Ivan said that the doctors showed him the liver of the deceased wife - she was very swollen and ascended as a sponge. He himself was also very sick, but he climbed out and lived for a long time.

We have enough of our dirt

In the radioactive zone, grandparents worked for more than two years. Grandfather immediately after the accident became the liquidator. They cleaned the area and buildings from radioactive contamination: they washed the walls of the hoses, cut and removed the soil. “Pencils” for individual dosimetry appeared only a year later, and when he got more 25 X-rays, he was finally taken to a clean area - to build houses in the city.

Grandma also continued to work at the industrial site: she sat in an office in 800 meters from the place where the liquidators worked. She also dialed the dose, although she was not given any measuring tools.

A year later, with a little irradiation manifested itself. My grandfather, who was then not yet thirty, had a heart attack at work. At the hospital, he was diagnosed with angina. Only many years later, when he was X-rayed, doctors saw he had heart scars. It turned out that he had a heart attack on his legs.

Radiated and their neighbors. This was due not only to the accident. Many residents of their houses were not builders, but workers of the plant. By participating in plutonium production, they paid with their health. Many were sick, many could not bear children. I was lucky in this sense: my grandmother and grandfather did not touch this misfortune, and in the year 1959 my dad appeared.

In 1960, they already began to grope for the opportunity to leave. Not so much because of myself, but because of the children, who also often got sick. In the end, they managed to escape, and after being fired, they settled in Ryazan, where they lived quietly, updating the non-disclosure subscription to the KGB every few years.

Talking about the accident at Mayak was allowed only in 1989, after the Chernobyl disaster. They began to write about it in newspapers (the grandmother retained them, leaving notes in the margin - “so that our grandchildren know and remember”). It became known not only about the tragedy of 1957 of the year, but also about the fact that radioactive waste was dumped into the Techa River since the 1946 of the year. The new government equated the liquidators to Chernobyl victims and assigned them decent privileges (although by now they have shrunk to shameful handouts).

When I spoke with my grandmother about the accident, she said that she would like to buy a ticket and see with her own eyes - what is there now? She could hardly have done it - not only because of health problems, but also because the former Chelyabinsk-40 remains a closed city that continues to poison Techa with radioactive waste.

She is not happy at all at Mayak that they process radioactive waste from abroad: “We were told that we forge the shield of the Motherland to stop the war. And now, for a lot of money, European countries dispose of their waste and take it to us. We have our own, its mud. We swallowed both in Chelyabinsk-40 and in Chernobyl. ”

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