Irradiated by power. Nuclear Chelyabinsk

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

A ground-based nuclear storage facility was built in secret from the people near Chelyabinsk. It already contains 5 tons of weapons-grade plutonium. Women from neighboring settlements are not recommended to give birth.

The Ministry of Atomic Energy of the Russian Federation (or, in a new way, the Federal Agency for Atomic Energy) is a fairy tale of the fairy tales of the homeland. Well, to whom else are so many TV plots, "round tables", conferences and government hours in the State Duma devoted? Well, about whom have so many articles, appeals and letters been written to the FSB, the Prosecutor General's Office, the government and the president personally? And it's not in vain - it deserves it.

For some ten years, this amazing department, absolutely not subordinate to anyone, first sells to the United States almost the entire stock of weapons-grade uranium accumulated in the country on the cheap. Then he buys other people's nuclear waste on the cheap and brings it into the country, not puzzling over whether he can recycle it. And, finally, it is building a grandiose burial ground in the heart of Russia, where, according to a joint project of the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy and the US Department of Defense, all the stocks of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium extracted from Russian warheads will be concentrated.

Let's go back ten years. On September 6, 1993, an agreement was signed between the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy and the US Department of Defense "regarding the provision of materials, training and services in connection with the construction of a storage facility for fissile materials obtained from the destruction of nuclear weapons."

And already in 1995, in the Chelyabinsk region, on the territory of the Mayak production association, a large construction project began. The Fissile Material Storage Facility (FMS) was built according to a project developed by the St. Petersburg Institute VNIPIET (All-Russian Design Research Institute for Integrated Energy Technology). The total cost of the project, according to the initial estimate, was $ 1.2 billion. The lion's share - $ 800 million - was to be allocated by the United States for construction. Over the next 100 years, the giant burial ground was supposed to store: no less than 400 tons of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium.

Construction work proceeded quickly and quietly. Although the project had no "secret" stamp. The obstacles that stood in the way in the form of ministries and departments either surrendered or were simply destroyed.

All information about HDM was strictly blocked. Therefore, the press, and therefore the people, information about the Ural burial ground got into only in 2001. And then by pure chance. The fact is that initially the construction was planned in the vicinity of Tomsk. For some reason, Minatom's plans have changed, but the technical documentation of the KDM in Tomsk has been preserved. And high-ranking FSB officials decided to hand it over to independent experts. For which, by the way, they immediately paid with a career.

The feasibility study of the largest nuclear facility began with a historical phrase, which the leadership of Minatom had repeatedly quoted from high rostrum over the years:

"In terms of the capacity of stored fissile materials, the degree of their protection from external influences, storage duration, reliability of environmental protection, the projected storage facility is a unique structure and has no analogues in domestic and foreign practice."

And this is the purest truth. The nuclear facility built near Chelyabinsk and commissioned on December 10, 2003 is truly unique and has no analogues: And in support of what has been said, we attach exactly seven proofs.

Proof one

All eggs in one basket

For the first time in the practice of nuclear powers, when creating a storage facility, the basic concept of mandatory territorial dispersal of nuclear weapons was violated. Note: The United States, according to official figures, has nine nuclear storage facilities. Russia, on the other hand, concentrates all its strategic stocks of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium in one place.

A natural question arises: if our state makes such a strange decision, then why should the designers not pay attention to the Krasnoyarsk Territory, where the Minatom plants for the production of plutonium were once in the rock mass and now giant tunnels are empty, extremely protected even from direct hits a nuclear bomb?

Proof of the second

The largest and most beautiful

And we did not need the Krasnoyarsk tunnels for the simple reason that we decided to build not underground, but the only one in the world and therefore, naturally, unique: a ground nuclear storage! Height 17.5 meters and an area of four football fields. The question arises: why should Russia build a gigantic warehouse of strategic raw materials, which is easily visible from the air and which is almost impossible to miss?

Designers refer to similar nuclear projects in the United States. But in the United States, there are no, and never were, land-based storage facilities. Perhaps Minatom is referring to American "nuclear cellars" -type storage facilities, slightly protruding from the ground and very compact. However, in the recently published measures to strengthen the security regime at US nuclear weapons sites (in connection with terrorist acts) it is said in black and white: within three years, uranium and plutonium from these sites should be transported to safer storage facilities: And our CDM is just these days diligently loaded with nuclear explosives!

Proof three

Opening and extinguishing is strictly prohibited

The dimensions of the already huge storage facility are also inflated because, instead of compact domestic containers (intended for long-term storage), fissile materials at Mayak will be stored in bulky US-made shipping containers. At the same time, the drawings of the latter are not attached to the documentation for some reason:

But what's even more interesting: the agreement strictly prohibits opening these very containers. Opening is prohibited even if the control "transillumination" detects a deviation from the norm or foreign objects.

By the way, according to experts of the Strategic Future Analytical Center, FSB veterans, there are several ways to put explosives into such a container. For example, x-ray transmission cannot detect plastic. And it is possible to make explosives based on some transuranic elements, which are practically indistinguishable from the fissile materials themselves.

We quote the technical documentation: "A beyond design basis accident, detonation of an explosive device external or disguised as a container with fissile materials, is considered only up to and including the transport control room." To understand this verbal jumble is as follows. The return of questionable containers is possible only at the loading stage. Containers, already placed in storage, are untouchable: under no circumstances. Even if the local special services understand that there is an explosive in one of the storage cells. In other words, emergency actions to eliminate the accident at the country's main nuclear storage facility are, in fact, prohibited.

Meanwhile, accidents at nuclear facilities can occur for more prosaic reasons - an accident, a malfunction: And in order to avoid them, during long-term storage, the whole world is trying to store weapons-grade uranium and plutonium in the form of oxides. Then the fissile materials do not react with oxygen, that is, the possibility of a fire is practically excluded.

At KDM, both uranium and plutonium, contrary to world practice, will be stored in the form of metals. According to experts, the latter means that a small spark is enough for them to ignite. At the same time, science still does not know a single chemical agent capable of extinguishing or at least localizing a violent uranium-plutonium flame.

Proof four

And the steel bird will fall

On March 3, 2003, the State Duma summoned the Minister of Atomic Industry Alexander Rumyantsev to a government hour. The deputies demanded an explanation. And Alexander Yurievich quoted a favorite paragraph from the technical documentation of the CDM …

"… the security level of the storage facility in Chelyabinsk meets all international standards and is ahead of all similar storage facilities in the world."

Oh, how I would like to believe our atomic minister. Believe that everything is calculated, thought out and the homeland can sleep peacefully. But here is another paragraph from the same documentation: "When developing the storage building, the fall of an aircraft weighing up to 20 tons, flying at a speed of 200 m / s, was taken into account." When referring to these figures, Minatom specialists refer to the weight of the universal American F-16 fighter. However, according to military experts, with a weight of 20 tons, the speed of the F-16 fighter is three times higher than that indicated in the documents. Then what kind of plane did the KDM designers have in mind ?!

Let's try to figure it out in more detail. The weight of an ordinary passenger aircraft TU-154 is about one hundred tons. The weight of Boeing 767 aircraft, which destroyed the World Trade Center towers in New York in a few seconds, ranges from 140 to 180 tons. Suppose one of them suffers an accident over our immense storage facility, which from the air looks more like an indoor stadium or a water park:

And this is just civil aviation. And there is also a military one. For example, strategic bombers, cruise missiles, strategic ballistic nuclear missiles, etc.

We leaf through the design documents of the HDM further. Our storage facility will withstand "artillery shelling and bomb attacks using the most common types of ammunition that do not require special delivery systems; high-explosive bombs with a caliber of 450 mm when exploding in a horizontal position on a" mattress "above the storage; cumulative shells with a caliber of 140 mm:"

According to military experts, the above level of security would be very relevant during the Second World War. Some of them have already dubbed the HDM "blotter" - an object that is practically unable to withstand today's weapons. Not to mention new products: But our storage is designed for a hundred years:

Fifth proof

The financial phenomenon of HDM

As already mentioned, the total price of the issue was initially announced by Minatom as $ 1.2 billion, two-thirds of which (about $ 800 million) was to be invested by the American side in the construction of the HDM. But as time went on, the ministers of the Russian nuclear industry changed, and with them the millions they called changed. They were rapidly decreasing.

From an official letter from Minatom to the State Duma of the Russian Federation dated April 20, 2004: "The American side contributed 160 million US dollars, the Russian side made about 500 million rubles."

Do you feel the difference? At the beginning of construction, the US contribution is $ 800 million, at the end - $ 160. The question "where did the money go?" has long been the third in a series of classic Russian questions "who is to blame?" and "what to do?" And along with the first two does not imply an answer.

But on the fourth question, which is directly related to the national security of our country, I would still like to get an answer. What kind of storage have we built? After all, physics is a concrete science. Storing one gram of plutonium today costs between $ 2 and $ 4 a year, these figures guaranteeing minimal security. In these minutes, 50 tons of fissile materials are loaded into a storage facility near Chelyabinsk. We multiply and get 100 million dollars a year and not a penny less - this is the real price of our safety!

But we already know that the cost of building a nuclear warehouse, designed for a hundred years, is only $ 160 million, plus the ruble contribution of the Russian side. And this, not counting the regrettable fact that the money declared for any construction in the native land must be divided at least by three:

This means that the most optimistic forecast guarantees us the safety of the country's main nuclear facility for a year, at most one and a half. And for the next ninety-nine years, Russia, as usual, will have to rely on the Russian "maybe".

Proof six

Who is not with us is against us

And now about the main trouble of the Chelyabinsk region - about the environment. For many years this land has been considered the dirtiest place on the planet and even in government circles has an unspoken name - "zone".

The fact is that a number of enterprises with increased radiation hazard are located on the territory of the Mayak PA, and over the past thirty years, accidents have happened here more than once or twice. By the way, on the same patch there is also a production for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, the capacity of which has long become outdated.

Do you remember how much noise was caused by the decision of the Ministry of Atomic Energy to import foreign radioactive waste, which, moreover, was purchased at prices several times lower than those set on the world market? How many scandalous reports, debates and pickets! Only three years passed, and there was silence. And they carry waste. And they accumulate at Mayak, because they simply do not have time to process them. Today a billion curies have already been accumulated. This is about twenty Chernobyls: And now, wall to wall, a storage facility is being erected here.

Minatom doesn't like talking about people living in the vicinity of Mayak. Although there are 50 settlements in the thirty-kilometer zone, in which about 200 thousand people live. According to statistics, every second of them dies from cancer before they reach 40 years of age. However, these data are already outdated. Recently, death in this area has become much younger - children have begun to die from cancer. There is no one to complain to. Doctors immediately warn pregnant women in the zone: "You cannot give birth."

You will say: but there are control and supervision services, relevant legislation, and finally, crowds of ecologists? So we come to the question of the ministries and departments that stood in the way of Minatom.

According to the law, the Ministry of Atomic Industry could start construction of the HDM only after receiving positive reviews from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Gosatomnadzor. In March 1995, the Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia, by letter number 11-25 / 168, refused to issue an approval for this project. It was absolutely clear that Gosatomnadzor would do the same. It would seem that the moment of truth has come. The federal supervisory bodies will not give, they will forbid, they will stand up: But in July 1995, an unexpected order by Boris Yeltsin appeared to remove Gosatomnadzor from control over all military facilities, to which for some reason KDM was also included. And in the obstinate Ministry of Environmental Protection, as if by order, a global reorganization began. At the same time, without waiting for any expert examinations, Minatom started the construction of the HDM.

However, one should not think that the war against the construction of the century ended there. In 1998, the former Ministry of Natural Resources, reorganized into the State Committee for Nature Protection, suspended the construction of the storage facility due to violations of a number of articles of Russian legislation. To which the Mayak management immediately put forward a justifying thesis: "The project was not reviewed due to the fault of the Americans. The US Department of Energy, financing this project, allocated money only for construction, and did not consider it necessary to finance the environmental impact assessment." So much for the culprit!

For information: at about the same time, the US Department of Energy, suspended from participation in the construction of the HDM and outraged by the secrecy surrounding this project, turned to the Russian Green Cross with a request to consider the issue of public examination of the quality of the storage facility construction:

By this time, the right and left factions of the State Duma, independent nuclear experts, Russian and foreign environmental organizations demanded to carry out an ecological examination and get acquainted with the CDM project. The scandal was gaining momentum.

Therefore, in April of the same 98th year, the State Committee for Nature Protection in the fire order conducts an ecological examination and makes: a positive verdict. And so that, what good, he does not change his mind, in 2000, one of the first decrees of President Putin, the State Committee for Nature Protection of Russia is abolished altogether. For the complete and final uselessness of their country.

Proof of the seventh

Stalker is such a profession

In 2001, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov received a note from the Strategy of the Future Research Information and Political Center, created by former high-ranking FSB officers. On 20 pages, the situation with the CDM was clearly and competently, as befits specialists of this rank.

Five months in the "Strategy of the Future" they waited for an answer, and then they sent the same note to Vladimir Putin. But this is precisely the phenomenon of our atomic ministry, that all the complaints about it, letters, inquiries, analytical notes and just cries for help addressed to the government, the Security Council, the FSB, the Prosecutor General's Office and personally to the President: after walking in a circle, everyone returns to the same Minatom and disappear without a trace in its depths.

The only ones who cannot get into the bowels of the aforementioned ministry are Russian journalists. Moreover, an exception is made only for the foreign-language press. For example, The Moscow Times published a short interview in 2003 with the chief project engineer, Mr. Gusakov. He reported that the information leaked to the Russian media was outdated, since in 1995 the technical documentation of the CDM was updated.

But if the documentation, at least a long time ago and in part, has been updated (which I sincerely want to believe), then why not present this weighty argument to the State Duma, the Federation Council, experts and environmentalists?

From a note by the Strategic Future Analytical Center: "The likelihood of sabotage: very high. The ban on the inspection of containers does not exclude the direct detonation and elimination of fissile materials in several scenarios:" It makes no sense to list the scenarios, since the implementation of only one of them means a global catastrophe for our country.

If we assume that at least a few cells of the concrete array of the storage facility and the containers located in them will be destroyed, then instant spontaneous combustion of uranium metal and plutonium will occur. It is impossible to extinguish such a fire, and the fissile materials will burn until they are completely burnt out. At best, rescuers will only be able to localize the fire at the accident site. But even if only five of 50 tons of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium are burned out, the consequences for Russia will be irreversible. Compare: a medium-sized nuclear bomb capable of wiping out an entire city requires only 10 kg of plutonium, and we are now talking about five tons!

The Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk, Kurgan and Tyumen regions will find themselves in the radioactive zone. It will require the evacuation of millions of people. A nuclear release at the junction of the most important railways will paralyze the economy of the entire country. Russia will simply be torn in half, and instead of the Urals, we will get a large radioactive hole. And this is only in the first weeks - then the cyclones will scatter the radioactive tail for thousands of kilometers.

Those who designed the HDM understood this well. It is not for nothing that two ventilation air intakes are removed from the "safe and environmentally safe storage" at a distance of 4 and 6 kilometers (usually air for ventilation is taken at a distance of 500 m even at the most environmentally hazardous facilities). The question is: why such precautions? And then, to give suicide bombers at least some time to deal with the dire consequences of the fire. And thereby to protect Europe and Asia from the radiation wave:

P. S. In Europe, they were seriously worried. According to unofficial data, the issue of the safety of the Ural Fissile Material Storage Facility will soon be submitted to the European Parliament: Meanwhile, the CDM continues to load weapons-grade uranium and plutonium.

Last week, during a friendly meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and IAEA head Mohammed al-Baradei, the two leaders talked about creating an international storage facility for spent nuclear fuel (SNF). During the conversation, it became clear that today Russia is the only country where the domestic legislation allows the commissioning of such a worldwide otkhodnik.

And although Vladimir Vladimirovich has not yet given an official consent to the construction of an international nuclear cemetery in his homeland, referring to public opinion, this issue, in the opinion of the presidential entourage, has practically been resolved. And to make public opinion more compliant, the Federal Atomic Energy Agency hastened to comment on the situation: firstly, the import of nuclear waste from all over the world is extremely beneficial for Russia, and, secondly, when it will still be:

And it will be, I suppose, very soon. Because 200 thousand tons of nuclear waste have already been accumulated all over the world. Nobody wants to store them on their territory, of course. And you need to store it somewhere. So why not in Russia? And we have a suitable place - the PO "MAYAK" is called (there you can’t spoil all the ecology), and we have experience in construction. Here next to the HDM and put it. Neatly on the border between Europe and Asia. So that in the worst case scenario: no one was offended.

P. P. S. State Duma deputy, ex-head of the FSB Nikolai Kovalev:

- All over the world there is the concept of "public opinion". There is hardly another country where the government, without receiving the approval of its people, would begin construction of such a grandiose nuclear facility. And the people would have kept silent. And this despite the fact that we will not find a single department, not a single person in Russia that would guarantee us at least some kind of security.

And what is the saddest thing: decades pass, in our state the leaders, the political course are changing, the government and parliament are changing, only the attitude towards our people does not change …