It was hushed up by officials for more than three decades.
Its primary purpose was to produce plutonium for the manufacture of nuclear weapons.
A forbidding sign near the closed city of Ozyorsk.
Photo credit:Ecodefense/Wikimedia
The Soviet nuclear program started sluggishly.
Soviet leaders did not have much faith in nuclear energy.
Flyorov urged Stalin to restart the Soviet nuclear program.
Mayak was built in 1948 in great haste.
The Soviets had a lot of catching up to do.
Mayak was to be Russias largest nuclear reactor.
The plant covers over 90 square kilometers, and is surrounded by an exclusion zone of 250 square kilometers.
Its existence and location was kept a secret.
From the very beginning, Mayak was a dangerous facility.
Little thought was given to workers safety or to the responsible disposal of waste materials.
Within a few years, the countryside and all water bodies around Mayak became heavily contaminated.
Satellite image of the Mayak nuclear facility.
Improper safety protocols resulted in several fatal accidents.
That afternoon, residents of the Chelyabinsk district noticedunusual colorsin the sky.
The local press speculated about polar lights appearing exceptionally far south.
Because of the secrecy surrounding Mayak, these villagers were not informed about the accident.
Evacuation of the nearest settlement began one week later.
People were not told what happened, just asked to pack their bags and leave.
Only about 10,000 people were evacuated, over a period of two years.
Map of the area contaminated by the Kyshtym disaster.
One year later in 1959, another account appeared in an Austrian newspaper.
These reports were systematically denied by Soviet Government officials.
In the absence of verifiable information, many doubted Medvedevs account.
It wasnt until the breakup of the Soviet Union, that the true scale of the accident emerged.
Cows and a radiation danger warning sign at the river Techa.
