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April 26 is Remembrance Day for Victims of Radiation Accidents and Disasters: 37 years ago, a horrific explosion occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Information about the disaster was kept secret even from those who cleaned up the accident, and the scale of the tragedy only became clear years later. But this wasn't the only disaster to occur in the Soviet Union whose scale was downplayed or concealed: emergency situations were unheard of in the Soviet Union. We've focused on one region—the Urals—and explored three serious accidents that claimed the lives of hundreds of people.

Radioactive disaster at Mayak (Chelyabinsk region)

The first radiation accident in the USSR did not occur in Chernobyl. September 29, 1957 An explosion occurred in a waste storage facility at a chemical plant in the closed city of Chelyabinsk-40. As a result, 23 villages were destroyed and 12 people were evicted from their homes. And those in the contaminated zone were 270 thousand people.

Information about the disaster was classified for over 30 years. It only came to light after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident. Here's what became known.

Chemical plant "Mayak" became the first enterprise in the USSR to produce atomic explosives - plutonium-239Radioactive waste from its production was stored in stainless steel tanks: in reinforced concrete canyons underground and in water. What exactly caused the waste to detonate remains unknown, according to 74.RU.

The explosion was incredibly powerful. A crimson-orange cloud rose into the air. The height of the mushroom cloud exceeded a kilometerThe 160-ton lid of the storage facility was thrown 25 meters away. A crater 20 meters in diameter and up to 10 meters deep formed at the site of the explosion. The blast wave blew out windows in buildings 800 meters from the epicenter. And 200 meters from the storage facility, glass flew out of its frames and brick walls were destroyed.

90% of the radioactive substances contained settled on the territory of the chemical plant. The remaining 2 million curies were dispersed in a northeastern direction across the territory. Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk, Tyumen and in places Kurgan regionChelyabinsk was saved from radiation by the wind rose—the cloud blew away.

Three military units, a prison camp, and three villages were "evacuated" within the first 24 hours. Life-threatening radiation levels were recorded in the area. to 23 kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion. Villagers refused to leave and met the soldiers with shovels.

"People didn't understand why they were being evicted. We were forbidden from giving any explanations. I remember a sturdy old man with a long gray beard coming out of his house and saying, 'Son, why do you want to evict me? My whole family is buried here in the cemetery.' I explained that it was unhealthy here. He didn't believe me and said that uranium had supposedly been found here. — the accident liquidator told 74.RU journalists in an interview Gennady Sidorov"Uranium mining was one of the most popular explanations for the large-scale resettlement. People couldn't see or feel the radiation, so the danger seemed distant. It was painful to watch as people's livestock and crops were taken."

Even children were involved in the work, having to bury radiation-contaminated crops in the fields.

"I was in first grade then. We were all called out to the fields again. We saw deep trenches. Without explanation, we were told to bury our entire harvest there. For two years, doctors came to us every month to conduct a full examination. In fifth grade, I developed a goiter due to iodine deficiency. We only learned about what happened at Mayak 40 years later.", recalls a resident of a village near a chemical plant Raisa Nizamovna.

It's still unknown how many people were affected by the Mayak radiation. Locals only say: "Nobody knew anything about what was going on. They brought the device to the body, and it rang. But I didn't understand what it was that was ringing. Everything was classified, after all. And disclosing it was practically punishable by death.".

"I personally counted 116 dead": the train crash in Lamenka (Tyumen Oblast)

In the local newspaper at the end July 1972 printed a note: on the railroad tracks in Lamenka (Tyumen region) a train crash occurred, two people died.

A few days before, at night, the family Nina Zavyalova I woke up to a terrible noise. A neighbor ran up to the house and screamed, "Save yourself, the tanks are going to burn!" The family looked out the window—there was a glow, howling, screaming, and noise.

At night from July 25 to July 26, 1972 diesel locomotive of a passenger train Novokuznetsk - Moscow At Lamenskaya station, a car collided with the last cars of a freight train. An explosion occurred.

"In those years, switchmen still worked on the railway, and in Lamenka they were also responsible for switching points. The station attendant on the night of the disaster was a young woman who had only recently been allowed to work her own shift. She asked the switchmen if the track was clear, and upon hearing an affirmative answer, she gave the green signal to an approaching passenger train. But the track was occupied at the time by a freight train, which had just started moving and was picking up speed. The trains collided. 116 people died.", writes a journalist from 72.RU Ekaterina Petrova, which investigated the tragedy on the railway tracks.

The first carriages of the passenger train suffered particularly severe damage, and almost all the passengers perished in the fire. Relatives of the victims reported that dozens of children had also perished—they were being taken to Artek for a holiday—but this information could not be confirmed: all information about the accident was classified.

"They pull out the embers and put them in a sheet, and the sheet immediately gets greasy. It turns out this is a former person. I personally counted 116 dead. My older brother and I sat and watched it all. Then we piled them up in a clearing and waited for the trucks, where they put the sheets with the remains in them and took them away. Our foreman, Sergei Alexandrovich, a veteran, swore and said he'd never seen anything like this at the front. I can still see it in my mind: a train car on the ground, and from underneath it, a woman's hand.", - recalls Yuri Zavyalov, who was 10 years old at the time of the accident.

Tyumen police officers and firefighters were working at the station, and a helicopter arrived. The site was cordoned off, and soldiers were deployed. Those involved in the cleanup were prohibited from disclosing information.

"A woman, most likely the conductor, was trapped between two train cars at the station, but she was beyond help and impossible to remove during the night. Only in the morning, with the help of a special tool, was her body removed from the pile of metal. I saw the charred bodies of the dead being loaded into a freight car. Not all of them were recognizable; one body was missing its head. For me as a teenager, what I saw was psychologically traumatic; never in my life had I seen so many dead.", — a Tyumen resident recalls in a 72.RU article Vera Temereva, who witnessed the disaster.

In 2020 year The head of the Lamensky rural administration announced the official figures: the number of dead is 58 people, with 16 injured. But witnesses say more than 200 people may have been injured. Security officials have still not declassified information about the train disaster.

Explosion at Sortirovka (Sverdlovsk region)

Early in the morning 4 1988 October, the at the station Sverdlovsk-Sortirovochny A train carrying hexogen and TNT rolled and crashed into a freight train carrying coal. The downed power line was being restarted by a backup. Power was supplied to the collapsed overhead contact system. 3000 VoltsA powerful electrical discharge passed through the car and its cargo, causing it to detonate. An explosion occurred.

The shock wave spread per 15 kilometers from the station - glass was blown out of houses in the center of Sverdlovsk, four people died, 500 were injured, 600 houses were damaged, the crater at the site reached eight meters in depth.

"When I arrived at work, the sight of the building shocked me. The floors between the rooms had collapsed. A pair of train wheels lay on the ruined roof... Many ambulances arrived, tanks and tractors began to approach. The barracks lay in ruins. I was shocked by the sight of a wooden house with a collapsed wall, where a piano had stood on the second floor.", — she told a gazeta.ru correspondent. Zinaida Igitova, the manager of a hostel located near the station.

Military personnel, police, and firefighters arrived to deal with the aftermath of the accident. At the same time, they cleared the rubble, evacuated the wounded, and laid new tracks—Sorting was a crucial railway junction on the Trans-Siberian Railway, and train service needed to be restored urgently. By October 7 the tracks were laid anew.

According to the official version, the culprit of the disaster was the 35-year-old station dispatcher. Tatyana KhamovaShe allegedly gave the green light to a transit train, not being sure the locomotive was holding the explosives, which caused the collision and subsequent explosion, according to the Oblastnaya Gazeta newspaper. The case was investigated for four years, but was ultimately hushed up.

After the explosion's aftermath was cleared, Sortirovka was rebuilt with high-rise buildings. The destroyed community center was demolished only in 2011.