Kyshtym Disaster - Biggest Nuclear Disaster Before Chernobyl
Our historical documentary series on the history of the Cold War continues with a video on the worlds first nuclear disaster at Kyshtym in 1957.
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#ColdWar #Kyshtym #Chernobyl
Пікірлер: 545
- ...You call nuclear reactors "steamed hams"? - Yes! It's a regional dialect. - Uh-huh, uh what region? - uuh, Chelyabinsk oblast. - Really? Well I'm from Zlatoust and I've never heard anyone use the phrase "steamed hams" - Oh no, not in Zlatoust, it's an Ozersk expression. - I see. Also, later: - Seymourov! My face is on fire! - No, comrade worker, it's just the northern lights.
@Real_Eggman
3 жыл бұрын
This deserves more likes.
@onlyGhostboy
3 жыл бұрын
@Joey Colton awful
@nemrody7828
2 жыл бұрын
@@worldoftancraft there are dialects in every language. A person from Moscow is going to speak Russian slightly different from a person from Grozny or Irkutsk.
@nemrody7828
2 жыл бұрын
@@worldoftancraft ah, here you are wrong. Dialects don't have to be unintelligible to the mother tongue. An example is Scottish English. It is a dialect of standardized British English, yet any native British person can understand a Scotsman. That's a colloquial dialect, a dialect found solely in casual speech. There are also official dialects, like American English, which has slightly different spelling for some words, and slightly different pronounciation. When a dialect becomes hard to understand to speakers of the mother tongue, it is no longer a dialect, but an unofficial separate language.
@secretbaguette
2 жыл бұрын
Unfunny
I learned about the disaster during the 1970s from a source you don't mention. There were a bunch of Russian scientific papers published in the 1960s, all of which discussed the ecological effects of suddenly removing all members of some species from an ecosystem. Somebody in the scientific community noticed these papers and, by collating the locations of the various species mentioned, deduced the general area in which the disaster took place.
60's setup studio, as a result of moving on through the Cold War in time, excellent! I like! And, I never heard of 'Kyshtym Disaster ' before so thanks for covering this topic!
There is also another famous story associated with Kyshtym. A mysterious anthropomorphic creature was found near the town in 1996 and was named the Kyshtym dwarf or Alyoshenka. Ufologists believe that it was a humanoid. According to a more realistic version, this is a mutated human fetus. The cause of the mutation could be, among other things, the consequences of the disaster.
@caorusso4926
3 жыл бұрын
@RavnDream You we have any pic of the humanoid? can you please send the link of the video?
@generalhorse493
3 жыл бұрын
Also, 11 years after Kyshtym, lake Karachay dried out. And a violent windstorm swept up the now exposed and dried out radioactive waste which had accumulated at the lake's bottom and spread it across the region, irradiating 250,000 people. Though to this day, this second disaster still doesn't have so much as a name.
@ToreDL87
3 жыл бұрын
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alyoshenka Radiation causing deformities. Perfect food for British bedtime story channels with only video/photographic references being panning of crappy drawings. Donno why stupid stories like that is such a big thing in Britain, nobody else gives a crap.
@generalhorse493
3 жыл бұрын
@@ToreDL87 1. That's a really rude way to voice your opinion. 2. This channel isn't popular just in britain, as non-british people also find interest in subtle horror, the mysterious, and the seemingly supernatural.
@sgtmayhem7567
3 жыл бұрын
RavnDream Thank you for posting that.
U.S. refusal to reveal the incident was almost certainly also rooted in the need to protect intelligence methods and sources... Eisenhower: "A nuclear plant in the middle of nowhere in the Soviet Union exploded!" Rest of the world: "...And how the hell exactly would you know THAT?!" Although it wouldn't surprise me in the least if the U.S. leaked the story to the Danes just to get it out there.
Simpson's reference
@Tweakjones5
3 жыл бұрын
Steamed hams
@noobstudios4457
3 жыл бұрын
where??
@kingtunip6386
3 жыл бұрын
@@noobstudios4457 the aroraborialus part
@yah5o
3 жыл бұрын
came here to upvote
@sgtmayhem7567
3 жыл бұрын
ŇøHă Ģ. ...but you steam a good ham.
"Closed Nature Reserve"!? Sounds like the "Pripyat Nature Park and Science Fiction movie set"
In Soviet Russia, Aurora Borealis sees you
@sgtmayhem7567
3 жыл бұрын
Nothing like a little Smirnoff with a little Smirnoff.
@rexkwondo21
3 жыл бұрын
Fcking hilarious
@mayowankenobi
3 жыл бұрын
So, the Aurora Borealis is the Chuck Norris of Soviet Russia?
@dennisyoung4631
2 ай бұрын
Yah, you have a glowing complexion, too…
10:48 I grew up in the 80s and see what you did there. (Aurora borealis, wink wink...)
Wow! I've been there, and actually worked on one of the Ozyorsk factories some years ago. Not to mention, that my grandfather was evacuated from Ozyorsk after this disaster with his family to another facility in Dimitrovgrad )) From what I saw and heard during my visit to Ozyorsk, the administration of the site had always experienced troubles with organisation of the working process due to a constant hurry which is known as "shturmovshina" in russian. As for Kyshtym disaster, the threat from the radioactive waste tank was realised well before the actual bang, but all attempts to avert the disaster were made impossible by bad design of the storage. Other design flaws manifest themselves in the form of abandoned due to radioactive poisoning production buildings all around the facility.
@levismith7444
Жыл бұрын
I would imagine the groundwater the that region is highly contaminated right?
As a Canadian, I am surprised that you didn't mention the Chalk River nuclear incident of 1952, which involved a then-obscure nuclear engineer named James Earl Carter, who went on to become the 39th President of the United States. Chalk River is in Canada, about 2 hours drive northwest of Ottawa on the Ottawa River.
@lilyrrichard236
2 жыл бұрын
A lot of Americans consider Jimmy Carter a dumb hick peanut farmer from Georgia and dont even know he was close to being a nuclear physicist when his father passed away and he left the Navy to run his family's peanut business. He is a very smart man.
@ChickenPermissionOG
2 жыл бұрын
@@lilyrrichard236 Still a bad president.
@Raptorman0909
2 жыл бұрын
He was sent there, after the incident, as part of the team to clean up the mess. He had absolutely nothing to do with the event itself but was sent there, as part of a US Navy team, to help with the clean up.
@matgeezer2094
Жыл бұрын
You kidding, Jimmy Carter had a background in nuclear engineering?? That's mad - and Three Miles Island happened when he was President
@RC-nq7mg
6 ай бұрын
Carter was part of the remediation team. But yes I agree, Chalk River doesn't get enough acknowledgment. Especially since it was the worlds first reactor meltdown.
We spent 70 years learning how to handle nuclear reactors ... it is very sad to see the current attitude towards a technology that matured so much. Imagine if humans gave up on fire permanently after the first few people suffered burns. This is what we are doing now with nuclear fire.
@alfredvonschlieffen6813
3 жыл бұрын
People are scared of what they don't understand. Sadly many don't bother to learn about it.
@andraslibal
3 жыл бұрын
@@alfredvonschlieffen6813 especially with highly incorrect series like the ever praised Chernobyl. Presenting radiation damage as if it was contagious from one person to the other.
@---uf2zl
3 жыл бұрын
The Fukushima disaster was only 9 years ago. I'm pro-nuclear but let's not kid ourselves about its safety, especially if a terrorist squad can infiltrate a NPP so easily.
@nix4184
2 жыл бұрын
fire doesn’t affect atoms and have the ability to damage DNA for generations, buddy, claiming nuclear energy to be anything like fire is invalid.
@ericluffy7970
Жыл бұрын
Well....like communism though these systems work on paper but human greed, complacency and ignorance are far more dangerous when applied to this aspect. I agree with what you are saying fundamentally. However, a Cancer diagnosis should be far more diversified in its options for treatment and feeling forced to channel efforts down approved treatment methods won't me feel better about Nuclear Medicine. These are life long commitments going into the occupations or diagnosis of illness. So just leaves me torn in thinking that we have gained enough progress to be comfortable with related to this aspect of society. We are not "educated" in this nor are safeguards, cleanup or safe handling where it should be. We need to keep talking, advocating, writing, documenting....in order to continue to climb the mountain we are at the foot of at this moment.
That Steamed Hams reference will last longer than any radiation.
Don't know how I hadn't found your channel sooner. I love the way you put your videos together. Very smooth and professional.
10:47 most famous scene in The Simpsons history referenced beautifully.
I'm sure people from Chelyabinsk makes the best Steamed Hams in the country.
@statesecretmusic
3 жыл бұрын
It's more of a Yekaterinburg term
@archlich4489
3 жыл бұрын
"SEYMOUR!"
@andreynazarov8113
3 жыл бұрын
СЕЙМУР!
@frankkolton1780
3 жыл бұрын
There are loads uncommonly gorgeous women in Chelyabinsk.
@RazielSchnitzel
3 жыл бұрын
@@frankkolton1780 it's the fucking radiation. How do I know? Ive already dated two from that oblast, and while they are hot as hell, they also give you radiation poisoning when you break up 💔😝
I remember reading that New Scientist article. Of course there have been many other near misses and radiation exposures from weapons production and civil power plants in the US, UK and France to name just a few. Oak Ridge had a potential storage event with enriched uranium in WWII, only prevented by a visit by a young Richard Feynman, who himself could barely read the site plans and felt out of his depth...but he picked out the problem almost by sheer chance.
@yootd3m
3 жыл бұрын
I keep seeing the name faynman he is a hero
This was quite excellent. Thank you.
The other common thread is generally covering up how bad it really is and a failure by the government to take responsibility.
Great content, very well produced. I love the more personal approach with a host rather than just an anonymous voice telling a story. Subscribed after the first video :)
This is the most detailed account of that disaster I have seen in my entire life. Very well done
Ever since Medvedev's 1980 book "Nuclear Disaster in the Urals" was published, this has hardly been an obscure incident. In many ways it remains one of the most severe nuclear disasters, simply because (like Chernobyl) there was very little effort at clean-up apart from "close the door and walk away." It's given us the world's most radioactive lake, for instance. Still a good story.
Thanks for this...
Nice and informative video 👍
Terrific improvement, actually appearing to be looking at your audience! Keep up the good work. I look forward to your next video.
Thankyou. I had never heard of this.Your work is appreciated.
One of my new favorite KZreadrs for disasters , adding you alongside plainly difficult and brick immortar
Fantastic video, never heard of this before
Well done mate
New sub. Excellent presentation and information!
a new the cold war video? awesome!
This channel should have lots more subscribers than it currently does. The masses are missing out on quality info and presentation
Thanks for the video, I learned from it! Never hear of Kyshtym. Kudos!
As someone who is very interested in history, I love your channel. Btw, will you cover French-Algerian war and other anti-colonial conflicts?
@kayzeaza
3 жыл бұрын
I think they might of actually covered that war in a video already. And yes they will talk about de-colonization in future videos, I think there is already a couple about Kenya and Ethiopia.
Very informative.
Loved the reference
Thanks David, Kyshtym, yet another nuclear accident I never heard of. As you said the rather excellent series Chernobyl really brings home the reality of Soviet incompetence with all things nuclear as well as the odd order of evacuation.
nice video
Thanks
The RBMK reactor which was the reactor used in all soviet era reactors was built so hurriedly, was built with a fatal flaw which contributed to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and other nuclear incidents in the Soviet Union. The flaw was pointed out by several engineers, but like most information of this type, it was silenced by the party.
I remember reading about this. I wanted to try to get a list published on a trivia site, so I looked up a bunch of lesser-known nuclear disasters. The list didn't get accepted, but I learned a lot about the disasters. The nuclear field is more dangerous than many people think. I am actually more worried about this disaster than I am about the aftereffects of Chernobyl, since that one has been public and they are constantly working to contain/clean it up. This one was not given the same level of care.
Wow, I never heard of it before, thanks.
SKIIIIIIIIINNNNNNER
Never heard of it? It stands out in every good source and even on wikipedia it is listed in direct comparisons between incidents on the event scale. I did learn some stuff though, good vid! Thanks.
Lots of references lmao, also well done on the material research and video production effort, as always.
Guess I haven't heard of this one. Excellent video, and contextualized to be relevant today.👍 BTW, digging the new set. Though I was a bit distracted by what was on the TV in the background 😂.
@kbtechandmedia
3 жыл бұрын
I'm glad I'm not the only one.
Nice channel
David - nice video from a secret city in a race to produce plutonium material, slight setback but the reactors remained in use with many more incidents through the years.
I don't watch TV much. Don't even own one. But when my son had me watch Chernobyl episode 1 on HBO during a visit to his house, I was immediately hooked. I came home and watched the whole mini-series via Amazon Prime. One of the most chilling things I ever watched. The mini-series does conclude that Chernobyl was a result of cheap Soviet construction. A litany of engineering shortcuts, shoddy work, and poor facility leadership. And that the disaster was enhanced by dogmatic Soviet propaganda and Soviet unwillingness to admit it's errors. Finding someone convenient to blame, anyone, was more important than finding solutions to the problem of a 2,600 square kilometer radioactive apocalypse. I hope everyone watches it. This previous disaster only reinforces the lessons of Chernobyl for those of us looking backward through Cold War History. Thank you for your always outstanding content.
Very interesting
love your background
Great vid. I first heard of Kyshtym from the game Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops, I had no idea it really happened.
Powerful stuff. I have my Duno Eye on this channel.
I am bound to have an awesome Saturday lazy breakfast! Thanks guys, another thing that I've heard nothing about despite being born in the Soviet Union.
The fact that so many nuclear accidents happend within the USSR shows how irresponsible the Soviets where with nuclear power.
I first heard about this a year ago. I was watching old archived news reports from when the Chernobyl accident happened and there was a passing phrase about there being a suspected but unconfirmed report of an accident decades earlier. I was like, "Wait, what, why have I never heard of this?" I had to start researching it right away.
You didn't answer the one question many of us have:. MAY I SEE IT?
@TheColdWarTV
3 жыл бұрын
er, no.
@garymingy8671
3 жыл бұрын
There's a hiways , next to it. Keep your windows closed ,signs, for 25 miles. You can get a dose !
The first mention of Mayak/Kyshtym/Chelyabinsk-40 disaster I read about was in 'Midnight in Chernobyl' which was unstoppably good. Nice that you covered it but no mention of the East Ural Radioactive Trace?
RAD-X, A Fallout reference...
@VladderGraf
3 жыл бұрын
And water purifiers for those villages.
@sapphyrus
3 жыл бұрын
With Vault Boy figure on the desk!
If they had a number of days without accident plaque, it would actually be a scale of how radioactive the whole area was.
Excellent video. Love the Simpsons reference.
Anyone else liking this setup?
@TheColdWarTV
3 жыл бұрын
*raises hand in agreement*
@rosswebster7877
3 жыл бұрын
Ishraq Sowad Same! Much less cluttered and claustrophobic.
Thank you, I have been trying to find information on this, for a while. Very few know of this disaster. I came across some information, very little information, on this a year or two ago. And it was in something on one of the villages, agriculture, iI was looking into.
You should've seen the faces I was making when I kept hearing the details behind this disaster. I couldn't stop shaking my head. How horrible. Well at least it's acknowledged now as a disaster. On a side note: The host has a new Studio. And I like it. My compliments to all those who made this video a reality.
nice video . love the cold war , could you please make a video covering japan during this era
I love the steamed hams reference.
I liked this video as soon as you made a fallout reference! :D
👏👏to the 'Cold War Conversations' coaster in the background👏👏😉😉
@TheColdWarTV
3 жыл бұрын
indeed!
Yes, I remember the similar effect like described at 10:36 , when Chernobyl happened the sky in my city had the very very dirty rainbow colors a few days! Russian communists insisted that everything was OK and no radiation, after radioactive clouds moved, covered and disturbed Scandinavian countries Moscow Commie confessed that it was an accident on a nuclear power plant.
I remember hearing about Kyshtym Disaster in 1977 at school, as we read a book by Roy Medvedev about Lysenkoism, I also remember reading about it in New Scientist.
When I was in high school in the late 1970s CBS reported the Kyshtym disaster on 60 Minutes. Harry Reasoner presented the claims of dissidents who leaked the story. He showed Russian maps of the area published after 1957. Several towns and villages were missing compared to maps published before 1957.
Rad-X. Ur a man of culture, david
Never heard of the "Kyshtym disaster". Years ago I saw a documentary about the Chelyabinsk nuclear incident but this is not the same event, is it? Interestingly enough, I grew up near the nuclear power plant of Kozloduy (Bulgaria) and I kinda know a lot about the nuclear "developments" over the decades but the Kyshtym disaster is something entirely new to me...
@Real_Eggman
3 жыл бұрын
Same disaster.
@valentinstoyanov304
3 жыл бұрын
@@soulsphere9242 Nope. It was a movie on Discovery Channel about the Chelyabinsk explosion...
@Harriet1822
3 жыл бұрын
Zhores Medyedev, _Nuclear Disaster In The Urals_. He knew that some waste storage facility had exploded. He studied articles in Soviet Biology journals on the effects of radiological contamination of lakes and deduced from the isotopes involved and the reported size of the lakes that this was not a controled experiment.
There was a lake that they used to dump radioative fuel rods that were already spent
This is also the general location of the 2013 meteor.
10:48 this is the best use of the Aurora Borealis meme I've seen yet.
It is interesting that the death of the Dyatlov group in 1959, may also have some connection with the Kyshtym accident.
@oleopathic
3 жыл бұрын
How ?
@nicholaskelly6375
3 жыл бұрын
I very much doubt that!
@jangrosek4334
3 жыл бұрын
@@oleopathic Several dead tourists worked at Mayak, but after the accident. Also, radiation was found on the bodies of the victims and this is one of the biggest mysteries of this case. There are several theories that try to explain them. According to one version, the tourists brought radioactive clothing from their work. According to another version, the group got into the territory that came under radiation contamination after the accident.
@oleopathic
3 жыл бұрын
@@jangrosek4334 there is new 2020 documentary of Dyatlov Pass. Official reason is avalanche.
@jangrosek4334
3 жыл бұрын
@@oleopathic The Russian prosecutor's office recently abandoned the avalanche version, announcing this as the personal opinion of the investigator, which he received by violating the investigative work.
You could probably make an hour long episode of what went on at and around Kyshtym and still not cover all of it. The soviets initiallyrefused to move people away from the disaster zone to they could study them, the people became human guinea pigs. Then when they finally accepted they needed to resettle them they moved them CLOSER to the river when they'd receive a higher dose. They made sure to not compensate the people enough to move, they couldn't go anywhere. Then there's the fact they hired prisoners to work at the reactor.. they just went from failure to failure to catastrophic failures. When they dumped the waste in the river they were actually running river water into and back out of the reactor to avoid a meltdown. Frankly, we're lucky they didn't screw it up worse, failure was inevitable.
[obligatory HBO chernobyl meme reference]
I hope to know of more "smaller" footnotes in the cold war history like this...
There are no nuclear disasters in Soviet Union. Do you need a vacation?
@tommy-er6hh
3 жыл бұрын
Siberia is nice vacation this time of year, especially the Ob river valleys.....
you took the words out of my mouth when I was about to say, what about windscale? lol
I understood the reference Superintendent Chalmers
Love the steamed hams reference 😂
secrecy never stays secret....
What a change! A YT presenter who is excellent and not trying to be a comedian!
I bet $50 that this video will be good and I have only seen the first minute of it.
@juliuscaesar8925
3 жыл бұрын
I won!
Chalk River NRX accident in 1952 in Canada included a fuel meltdown and subsequent hydrogen explosions and is only dismissed as a serious accident due to nuclear awareness being so low at the time, IMHO.
OH I REMEMBER THAT
We will never know how many people died as a result of Kyshtym and Chernoby. In 1978, the New York Times published a long article about a major Soviet nuclear accident east of the Urals. I read that article in real time and was very disturbed. I suspect that at least one retired CIA agent talked to a New York Times reporter. It could even be the case that the NYT got its hands on 1 or more Russian or CIA documents. The NYT acknowledged having talked to people who had worked in the American embassy in Moscow.
Wow they were dumping the waste in the river
0:36 Rad-X.... Nice Fallout reference :D
It's not just cold war, Russia always keeps it's failures in secrecy. As an example is the recent 2019 accident in Arkhangelsk.
@caorusso4926
3 жыл бұрын
I hope will not take long before we know what really happen there
@hadirahman3036
3 жыл бұрын
So do America and china
@pikmaniac2643
3 жыл бұрын
@@hadirahman3036 the difference at least in the US though is that free speech and open press make it a lot tougher to maintain cover-ups, so it's often less damning to simply admit the incident. For example, Three Mile Island didn't take long to garner public attention.
@hadirahman3036
3 жыл бұрын
@@pikmaniac2643 Americans only know about the Vietnam War in 1968 after several years.... They also had no knowledge about several American and cia operations in the past and current,, examples the atom bomb, area 51,iran-contra affair....
@ursodermatt8809
3 жыл бұрын
@@hadirahman3036 keep it coming
Remember what Tomep (Homer) Simpsonkova says, "What happens in Siberia, stays in Siberia, comrade".
Love the fallout reference
I hope there will be an episode on the Three Mile Island accident. It remains an important nuclear accident that happened during the Cold War.
Where can I get that awesome giant Cosmonaut glaring at the Earth artwork?
I first heard of this in the early 80's as satellites were getting better at close observation , and a news story on TV reported that a large area of the Soviet Union was found to be abandoned for reasons unknown . If I remember right they were saying around 125 towns had ceased to exist , no one knew why but a nuclear accident was the popular opinion . Until I learned what I know now I thought it could be a meltdown , we know better now but I never would have thought that a waste release would be that deadly.
Always wanted to see a documentary about the fermi 1 partial meltdown i live nearby but never herd much about it other then it happened
@leechowning2712
3 жыл бұрын
Check Plainly Difficult. He has a good video on it.
Ahhh, David shows his inner Superintendent Chalmers. Hehehe...
@TheColdWarTV
3 жыл бұрын
SuperNintendo Chalmers, you mean?