The Soviet "Lake of Death"

[Winston]

'The graveyard of the Earth': inside City 40, Russia's deadly nuclear secret

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/...e-city-40-ozersk-russia-deadly-secret-nuclear

Gary Powers' ill fated U-2 mission was to investigate the accident that led to this lake becoming deadly, the accident being the explosion of a plutonium processing waste storage tank and continued dumping into the lake afterwards:

"Lake Karachay - The Lake of Death - In Soviet Russia, Lake Contaminates YOU"

https://www.damninteresting.com/in-soviet-russia-lake-contaminates-you/

One hour standing at its shore would have killed you. The radioactive concentration there is reported to exceed 120 million curies. In contrast, the Chernobyl incident released roughly 100 megacuries of radiation into the environment, but "only" about 3 megacuries of Strontium-90 and Cesium-137 (far less than in the Lake of Death).

That's what you get when you dump the waste from a plutonium separation facility directly into a lake. Go figure.

The surface of Lake Karachay is now entirely concrete, however the lake’s payload of fission products is not completely captive. Recent surveys have detected gamma-emitting elements in nearby rivers, indicating that undesirable isotopes have been seeping into the water table. Estimates suggest that approximately a billion gallons of groundwater have already been contaminated with 5 megacuries of radionuclides. The Norwegians are understandably nervous that some of the pollution could seep into the Arctic Ocean and drift to their own northern shores.

In a past event, the lake dried up completely and the incredibly radioactive dust from it spread far and wide.

Lake Karachay in 2001 - it's finally now completely covered with concrete.

 

[rharshberger]

Its funny how this particular piece of history resurfaces every couple of years.
The accident that Gary Powers may have been investigating was not the original cause of the lakes radioctive contamination, it was a convinent dumping area for the nearby Mayak reactor waste which was an open cycle type and contaminared cooling water was dumped directly into the lake and another nearby lake was also polluted in the same manner since it was the primary source of cooling water. Lake Karachay and the Chernobyl disaster are common subjects at my work given that we are doing large scale cleanup of US nuclear weapons facilities.

 

[Winston]

Its funny how this particular piece of history resurfaces every couple of years.
The accident that Gary Powers may have been investigating was not the original cause of the lakes radioctive contamination, it was a convinent dumping area for the nearby Mayak reactor waste which was an open cycle type and contaminared cooling water was dumped directly into the lake and another nearby lake was also polluted in the same manner since it was the primary source of cooling water. Lake Karachay and the Chernobyl disaster are common subjects at my work given that we are doing large scale cleanup of US nuclear weapons facilities.

The very detailed account of what happened is at the link I provided, a far more detailed account than I've found anywhere else. As always, I'd definitely be interested in seeing even more.:

https://www.damninteresting.com/in-soviet-russia-lake-contaminates-you/

At least according to that account, the lethal contamination levels at the lake came from the storage tank accident and continued dumping there afterwards. The Techa River had been previously contaminated:

In their haste to begin production, Soviet engineers lacked the time to establish proper waste-handling procedures, so most of the byproducts were dealt with by diluting them in water and squirting the effluent into the Techa River. The watered-down waste was a cocktail of “hot” elements, including long-lived fission products such as Strontium-90 and Cesium-137—each with a half-life of approximately thirty years.

 

[XolveJohn]

I knew a guy that helped clean up a serious accident at the Pantex plant. He got cancer, then had a kid, who also got it. I would not think that dna transmits cancer.

Maybe the whole nuke thing is a bad idea, weapons, power plants. Fukashima is still glowing, robots die in an hour. They of all people should have known of the danger,

after the WW2 bombs. The meltdown happened because the backup generators had fuel tanks above ground, and were washed away by the Tsunami flood. They are

lucky Godzilla did not show up.

 

[KidRockET]

The Russians did it...

 

[Winston]

I knew a guy that helped clean up a serious accident at the Pantex plant. He got cancer, then had a kid, who also got it. I would not think that dna transmits cancer.

Maybe the whole nuke thing is a bad idea, weapons, power plants. Fukashima is still glowing, robots die in an hour. They of all people should have known of the danger,

after the WW2 bombs. The meltdown happened because the backup generators had fuel tanks above ground, and were washed away by the Tsunami flood. They are

lucky Godzilla did not show up.

The Tepco execs who were responsible for Fukushima should have all been sent to prison. GROSS negligence in the operation of ANTIQUE nuclear power plants. The reactor manufacturer, GE, told them long ago that they should raise the sea wall and elevate the backup generators and their fuel supply above ground level, but they didn't. NOTHING bad would have happened if they'd simply followed those warnings.

For nuclear power, which should become our primary power source, we should transition entirely to these:

[video=youtube;i1fqB6p9pgM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1fqB6p9pgM[/video]

and these:

[video=youtube;N2vzotsvvkw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vzotsvvkw[/video]