4 ms·

A Radioactive Cloud Wafts Over Europe, with Russia as Chief Suspect

4 points by tim_sw 9y ago

topspin 9y ago
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-readings-radioactive-pollution-184627359.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-confirms-extremely-high-re...
- wahern 9y ago
  Fascinating story about the early years of Mayak: https://www.thescreamonline.com/strange/strange08-01/chelyabinsk40.html https://www.thescreamonline.com/strange/strange08-01/chelyab... .... 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 9y ago
    If you'd like a mind blowing read find a copy of this: https://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Disaster-Urals-Zhores-Medvedev/dp/0393334112 https://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Disaster-Urals-Zhores-Medvede... 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 9y ago
      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)

4 points by tim_sw 9y ago

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-readings-radioactive-pollution-184627359.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-confirms-extremely-high-re...

wahern 9y ago
Fascinating story about the early years of Mayak: https://www.thescreamonline.com/strange/strange08-01/chelyabinsk40.html https://www.thescreamonline.com/strange/strange08-01/chelyab... .... 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 9y ago
  If you'd like a mind blowing read find a copy of this: https://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Disaster-Urals-Zhores-Medvedev/dp/0393334112 https://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Disaster-Urals-Zhores-Medvede... 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 9y ago
    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)