Techa River, radioactive wastes

Degteva MO, Kozheurov VP, Vorobiova MI. 1994. General approach to dose reconstruction in the population exposed as a result of the release of radioactive wastes into the Techa river. Sci Total Environ 142 49-61. 

The world s worst radioactive contamination (twice that of Chernobyl) is at Mayak in Russia. This has resulted from explosion of a radioactive waste storage unit on September 29, 1957 and deliberate dumping of liquid waste into the Techa River in 1949-1956 94... 

Reprocessing plants and the nuclear industry in the former Soviet Union have discharged to the Ob and Yenisey river systems ending up in the Arctic ocean. In 1950-51 about 77 x 10 " m liquid waste of 100 PBq was discharged to the River Techa. The Techa River is connected to the River Ob as is the Tomsk River where the Tomsk-7, a major production site for nuclear weapons plutonium, is situated. Other nuclear plants, such as the Krasnoyarsk industrial complex, have discharged to the Yenisey river. Large amounts of radioactive waste are also stored at the sites. 

Another important project now underway covers the description of all accidents which took place in Russia. These are the discharge of radioactive waste into the Techa River, the explosion at the Mayak plant in 1957, the accident in Tomsk in 1993, and the Chernobyl accident. We decided to analyze these accidents taking into account the efficiency of protective actions. I mention this project only because of the fact that in analyzing the Tomsk accident within the framework of this Workshop, we use an assessment made earlier at this site. 

In 1957 a tank with high-level waste fi-om the reprocessing plant at Mayak exploded due to the failure of the cooling system. This accident resulted in release of 20 million curies of radioactivity, mainly Cs and Sr. Most of radionuclides fell near the tank, but 10% were carried away and contaminated 23,000 km of land northeast of Mayak. From 1948 to 1953 Mayak discharged high-level waste directly into the Techa river. When radioactivity was discovered in the mouth of the Ob, discharges into the river were stopped, and radioactive waste was dumped into the lake Karachay, located on the Mayak site. Cesium and strontium contained in the lake... 

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