In the USSR, nuclear charges were secretly detonated near large cities. Single raid on the site of a nuclear explosion Explosion Globe 1
Globus1, Chagan, Butan...
On September 19, 1971, the inhabitants of several villages in the Ivanovo region suddenly felt the ground slipping from under their feet. The windows rattled in the houses, the cows mooed in the barn.
However, no one really got scared. The ground shaking lasted only a few seconds and ended as suddenly as it began...
A few days later, from rumors that were passed from mouth to mouth, local residents learned the reason for this unusual "natural phenomenon."
It was rumored that somewhere near Kineshma, the military had detonated some kind of terrible bomb and supposedly something did not work out for them. The explosion area was quickly cordoned off by soldiers, and no one was allowed to enter.
The cordon was soon lifted, but the ban on visiting berry places remained for a long time ...
What really happened on that September day, the inhabitants of the Ivanovo region, and with them the rest of the population of Russia, learned only twenty years later, when the stamp “Secret” was removed from many events of the Soviet era ...
As is often the case, word-of-mouth reports of the time were largely true.
It turned out that on that day, four kilometers from the village of Galkino, Kineshma district, Ivanovo region, on the left bank of the Shacha River, an underground explosion of a nuclear device with a capacity of 2.3 kilotons was carried out. It was one of a series of "peaceful" nuclear explosions carried out for industrial purposes.
The experiment was commissioned by the USSR Ministry of Geology and was codenamed "Globus-1".
The depth of the well into which the nuclear charge was laid was 610 meters. The purpose of the explosion is deep seismic sounding along the Vorkuta-Kineshma profile.
The experiment itself went off without a hitch. The charge detonated at the right time. The equipment, located both in the immediate vicinity of the test point and at a distance of thousands of kilometers from it, correctly registered vibrations. earth's crust.
Based on these data, it was planned to identify oil reserves in the northern regions of the European part of the country.
(Looking ahead a little, let's say that we managed to solve the problem - new oil fields were found in the Vologda and Kostroma regions.)
In general, everything went fine until, at the eighteenth minute after the explosion, a gas-water fountain appeared one meter northwest of the charging well, bringing radioactive sand and water to the surface.
The release lasted almost twenty days.
Subsequently, it was found out that the cause of the accident was poor-quality cementing of the annulus of the charge well.
It is also good that as a result of the accident only inert radioactive gases with a short half-life were released into the atmosphere, and due to dilution in the atmosphere, a rapid decrease in radioactivity in the surface air layer occurred.
Therefore, already a few hours after the explosion, at a distance of two kilometers from the epicenter, the dose rate did not exceed the natural radiation background.
Water pollution in the Shacha River above the permissible standards was observed at a distance of only a few tens of meters. And even then only in the first days after the accident.
The dry figures of the documents say that on the third day the maximum dose rate was 50 milliroentgen per hour, and on the twenty-second day - 1 milliroentgen per hour ...
Eight months after the explosion, the dose rate at the facility did not exceed 150 micro-roentgens per hour at the wellhead, and outside it - 50 micro-roentgens per hour, with a natural radiation background - 5-15 micro-roentgens per hour.
As it was written in the report on the experiment, "thanks to the well-coordinated work of the radiation safety service, none of the population and participants in the explosion was injured."
It really is. Nobody got hurt. But only that day. For some reason, doctors from the nuclear industry do not like to talk about long-term and indirect consequences.
And the consequences, it seems, still were.
“After this Globe, calves with two heads were born,” recalled Nadezhda Surikova, a paramedic from the village of Ilinskoye. - Premature babies were born. Miscarriages became commonplace, and when I started working, all the women nursed normally for the full term. This testimony was published in 2002 by the Gazeta newspaper.
Nadezhda Petrovna is sure that two children here died from radiation sickness. The teenagers visited the site of the explosion two months later, and in winter both fell ill - they suffered from headaches. They were taken to Ivanovo, where they were diagnosed with meningitis. Soon the guys were gone. The villagers don't believe in meningitis.
According to local authorities, teenagers themselves are to blame for their death. Despite the ban, they made their way into the closed area and moved the concrete slabs that closed the mine. Although it is difficult to imagine how they could cope with multi-ton blocks.
In addition, the number of deaths from cancer has increased sharply in the settlements located near the site of the explosion. And not only in the 1970s.
According to the head doctor of the regional oncology dispensary Emma Ryabova, the Ivanovo region is still in first place in Russia in terms of the number of cancers.
The unfavorable ecological situation in the area of the explosion still persists. In a way, it has gotten worse over the years.
According to Olga Dracheva, head of the radiation safety department of the Ivanovo regional SES, in 1997 gamma radiation with a capacity of 1500 microroentgens per hour was recorded at some points on the site, in 1999 - 3500, and in 2000 - already 8000!
According to Olga Alekseevna, now the radiation power has decreased and is about 3000 microroentgens, but everything indicates that isotopes continue to come to the surface.
This usually happens during floods - melt waters wash out contaminated soil and carry it around.
The dead place near the village of Galkino has never been left without the attention of the authorities.
Back in 1976, two wells were drilled here to study the causes of the accident and the consequences of the impact of the explosion on the bowels. Drilling fluid and pumped water containing cesium-137 and strontium-90 were collected in specially dug trenches.
After completing the research, the trenches were covered with clean soil. Atmospheric pollution at the drilling site remained at the level of background values…
In the 1990s, expeditions to the site of the Globus-1 explosion became annual...
As of the beginning of the 2000s, the situation in the area of the explosion was as follows. Radioactive soil is located at a depth of 10 cm to 1.5 m, and at the site of trenches covered with soil - up to 2.5 m.
On the territory of the facility, the dose rate of gamma radiation at a height of 1 m from the surface ranges from 8 to 380 microroentgen per hour. The highest readings are observed in limited areas and are due to an opening to control the trench ...
In 2002, the administration of the region took care of the situation in the Kineshma district. A number of meetings were held at which a decision was made to conserve the site of the explosion. It is planned to straighten the channel of the Shacha River, to fill in clean soil at the site of the explosion... Works at the Globus-1 facility were included in the Radiation Safety of Russia Program and began in 2003. Whether they are completed or ongoing, no one can say for sure.
Also, no one can say what kind of bright yellow tank trucks with radioactive hazard badges cruised all the summer months of 2005 in the direction of the object. This was reported by the newspaper "Ivanovo-Voznesensk".
The cars had numbers of the Tver, Murmansk and Voronezh regions, where, as you know, nuclear power plants are located.
Journalists suggested that some hazardous waste from the nuclear power plant was brought to the Ivanovo region. The regional authorities categorically deny this. However, it was not possible to find out what kind of cargo the tankers were transporting.
Although the explosion in the Ivanovo region took place under the designation "Globus-1", it was not the first one carried out within the framework of the project for seismic sounding of the Vorkuta-Kineshma profile.
The first experiment, codenamed "Globus-4", was carried out on July 2, 1971 in the Komi ASSR.
Eight days later, the second test took place there, designated in official documents as Globus-3.
Then there was an explosion in the Ivanovo region, which we described above.
Explosions in the Komi ASSR and in the Arkhangelsk region passed without complications.
According to official data, in the Soviet Union from January 1965 to September 1988, 124 nuclear explosions were carried out for peaceful purposes, including 119 explosions outside the territory of nuclear test sites. All of them were carried out underground.
The first such experiment took place on January 15, 1965 in Kazakhstan, on the territory of the Semipalatinsk test site.
The test had the code designation "Chagan". Its purpose was to develop a new type of charge, which was later supposed to be used for industrial nuclear explosions.
The test was successful, demonstrating both the reliability of the device and the relative ease of its use ...
In the same year, on March 30, in Bashkiria, under the code name "Butan", the first explosion that had a practical purpose thundered. Its goal was to intensify oil production in the region.
This was the first so-called group nuclear explosion in our country: two charges were laid close to each other in wells 617 and 618 and detonated simultaneously.
In subsequent years, explosive work using nuclear charges was carried out quite intensively. The customers of the experiments were various ministries and departments: geology (51 explosions), gas industry (26), oil and oil refining industry (13), medium machine building (19).
The geography of the use of nuclear charges for peaceful purposes was also wide (explosions made at nuclear test sites are not considered in this case).
81 shells were blown up on the territory of the RSFSR: Bashkir, Komi, Kalmyk and Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics, Tyumen, Perm, Orenburg, Ivanovo, Irkutsk, Kemerovo, Arkhangelsk, Astrakhan, Murmansk and Chita regions, Stavropol and Krasnoyarsk regions. In Ukraine - two shells, in Kazakhstan - thirty-three, in Uzbekistan - two, in Turkmenistan - one.
The last industrial nuclear explosion in the USSR was carried out on September 6, 1988. A charge with a capacity of 8.5 kilotons was blown up in the Arkhangelsk region. The experiment was codenamed Rubin-1.
The explosion in the Ivanovo region is not the only nuclear test in the framework of the program for the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes, which is classified as emergency. There were a number of other incidents as well. Moreover, the consequences of "Globus-1" against the background of others do not look the most terrible.
On March 11, 2002, a meeting was held in the administration of the Ivanovo region, at which a project was considered to eliminate the consequences of a thirty-year-old nuclear explosion.
Vyacheslav Ilyichev, a leading researcher at the Moscow Institute of Industrial Technologies, cited the following data: out of 81 peaceful nuclear explosions carried out in the territory Russian Federation, four were emergency.
Unfortunately, there is little information about these incidents - the nuclear department is still in no hurry to report what actually happened in past years in various parts of our vast country. But some information still seeped through the high fences.
So, it is known that on August 24, 1978 in Yakutia, by order of the USSR Ministry of Geology, the Kraton-3 experiment was carried out.
Due to the negligence of the workers, a concrete plug was knocked out of the mine, in which the nuclear charge was laid, which prevented the release of radionuclides to the surface.
The participants in the work suffered the most from this, since it was towards their camp that the infected cloud moved ...
Experts also call the explosion on the Obusa River in Ust-Ordynsky Buryatsky as emergency autonomous region. Although there are no official data on this subject.
The fact that there were problems during the tests is evidenced by the fact of a sharp increase in the number of oncological diseases among local residents. Children were especially affected. Maybe it's just a coincidence. Or maybe not…
An increase in the background radiation after peaceful nuclear explosions was also recorded in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Yakutia, and the Murmansk Region.
Fortunately, the indicators only slightly exceeded the natural background, so it is impossible to talk about any serious consequences for the population and nature. Although nothing goes unnoticed...
But in the Astrakhan and Orenburg regions, where underground tanks for storing oil and gas condensate were created by nuclear explosions, the unfavorable radiation situation persists to this day.
These structures were operated in violation of technology. Instead of pumping dehydrated products into them, solutions capable of accumulating radiation were poured inside.
Now, decades later, underground cavities began to decrease in volume, and radioactive brine began to appear on the surface ...
And one more fact. There is a rather curious and widely unknown document - "Analysis of the environmental situation in Russia." It was prepared specifically for the meeting of the Presidium of the State Council of the Russian Federation in June 2003. The document, in particular, says: "The negative consequences of underground nuclear explosions carried out for peaceful purposes are noted in Yakutia, the Arkhangelsk, Perm and Ivanovo regions."
It can be assumed with a high degree of probability that we know only a small fraction about emergency peaceful nuclear explosions ...
After the Rubin-1 experiment, peaceful nuclear explosions were not carried out in the USSR. And soon a moratorium was imposed on the testing of combat charges, which lasts to the present day.
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Near the Volga there is an abandoned site with radioactive waste measuring 10 thousand cubic meters
40 years ago, on September 19, 1971, an underground nuclear explosion was carried out 4.5 km from the village of Galkino (Kineshma district) on the left bank of the Shachi River.
Ivanovskaya Gazeta has acquired new documents that testify that now the industrial site at the site of the explosion (its code name is Globus-1) with a size of 05-1.5 hectares and a depth of 10 to 300 centimeters can be regarded as an object with radioactive waste.
The radionuclide cesium-137 was found in samples in amounts exceeding the natural content up to 2000 times. The territory is also contaminated with fragmentation radionuclides and tritium, the maximum specific activity of the soil is 170 times higher than the norm, and radioactive water from the center of the explosion can flow into rivers.
What happened in 1971?
In a forest clearing at a depth of 610 meters, scientists laid a nuclear charge with a capacity of 2.3 kilotons. At the 18th minute after the explosion, an accident occurred: a fountain burst out of the ground a meter from the well. Together with water and mud, inert gases, radioactive products of cesium-137 and strontium-90 began to come to the surface ...
At that time, about 10 families lived in the nearest settlement to the place of the experiment - the village of Galkino.
One of the witnesses, Faina Ryabtseva, who worked as a cook on an expedition that carried out explosive work, was found by Gazeta journalist Vasily Gulin.
- For the first time in my work as a cook, I set the table with pressed caviar, canned ham and Finnish servelat, the woman said. - And the people were all good - cheerful, intelligent, they sang well with the guitar. They arrived a month before the explosion, and about a couple of weeks after it left... They said they found what they were looking for, but in a different place. And they advised me to go to the place of work less often: they say, it’s dangerous, you can fail.
Now no one lives in Galkino, and getting there is not easy: past hurricanes have blocked roads, beavers have built dams, and in some places swamps along the roads. But in the village of Oktyabrsky, which is 4-5 kilometers from the village of Galkino, IG journalists found another witness to those events - Valery Smirnov, who came to the deserted village for the sake of bees.
- In Soviet times, about 1,500 people lived in Oktyabrsky- recalls Valery Ivanovich. - A couple of weeks before the explosion, two lieutenant colonels and a colonel walked around the village, saying that they would search for oil in the area, drill a well. And on the day of the explosion, they demanded residents to vacate the premises. And not in vain: several houses were damaged by the blast, then the authorities even paid money for repairs.
Valery Smirnov believes that it was because of those events that his son died. Some time after the explosion, the son and four of his friends tried to get into the "holes" in the place of work of scientists: to see if oil was found. Smirnov Jr. and Yura Uchaikin fell ill, suffered from headaches and soon died. The official diagnosis is meningitis. Three other guys stayed to live only because they didn’t climb into the “holes”.
Bomb leader went blind after 4 years
Until 1996, cattle grazed at the landfill. Animals quenched their thirst from the lake formed after the explosion. And, allegedly, there were cases of the birth of calves with a fifth leg on the spine and sheep without wool.
The team of seismologists left, leaving equipment and property - apparently, realizing its danger. But the locals did not let the good go to waste: the bulldozer was taken by the local collective farm, and the powerful pump that pumped water from Shachi to the drilling rig, then served on the village water supply system for several years!
Estimates of the impact of the accident on local residents differ. One of the paramedics in Ilyinsky told reporters that dozens of her patients then developed malignant tumors, and premature babies were often born.
However, it is now impossible to trace the dynamics of oncological diseases and blood diseases among local residents: as the press wrote, in 1996, under mysterious circumstances, the archive of the Zavolzhsky regional hospital burned down, where the medical records of the population were stored.
Meanwhile, the seismologist V.V. Fedorov, who led the preparation and conduct of the explosion, became blind in 1975 at the age of 44 and became a disabled person of the first group.
Radioactive cesium enters the Volga through Shacha?
Scientists from the All-Russian Design and Survey Research Institute of Industrial Technology of the Ministry of Atomic Energy of the Russian Federation (the successor to the organization that carried out "peaceful" explosions in the USSR) claim that there is no damage from Globus-1.
Back in the 70s, 3 trenches were dug on the territory of the Globus-1 facility, where drilling fluid and pumped water contaminated with radionuclides were collected; drilled 2 exploration wells. And then the whole area was simply covered with clean soil.
- After the accident, only inert radioactive gases with a short half-life were released into the atmosphere, - says the leading researcher of the research institute Vyacheslav Ilyichev.- Already in the first hours after the explosion at a distance of 2 km, the dose rate did not exceed the natural radiation background. No one from the population and participants of works has suffered.
Despite the bravura reports, the research institute had to develop a project for the rehabilitation of the Globus-1 facility. The thing is that the Shacha River, which flows into the Volga 12 kilometers from the test site, washed away the shore of the site and could make its way directly above the well, which means that all the “radioactive mud” could well end up in the Volga. In 2004, a bypass canal was built, and the banks of Shachi were strengthened.
But this did not completely solve the problem. In 2008, specialists from the St. Petersburg Research Institute of Radiation Hygiene visited the site. Their conclusions are disappointing: according to the Deputy Director of the St. Petersburg Research Institute Viktor Repin, the processes in the wells lead to the fact that radiation nuclides come to the surface. Some scientists are completely categorical: in spring and summer, cesium salts still get into Shacha, and through it go to the Volga, which endangers the health of thousands of people.
Solid radioactive waste lies on the surface
A document on the study of the Globus-1 site today fell into the hands of IG journalists. Here are a number of quotes from this paper that show what conclusions the scientists reached.
“The radiation situation is only getting worse. Conditions for long-term localization of the radioactive products of the explosion have not been created.”
“The total volume of soil contaminated with radionuclides is 10 thousand m3. The data of the expeditions confirmed the presence of the radionuclide cesium-137 in the samples in quantities exceeding the natural content up to 2000 times and the contamination of the soil with fragmental radionuclides and tritium.”
“A significant spread in the values of the dose rate of gamma radiation in the air was revealed. The concentration of caesium-137 in all soil samples was very high. For most of the studied soil samples, there is an excess of the minimum significant specific activity. Such materials are classified as solid radioactive waste.”
“The distribution of radioactivity on the site is uneven and chaotic. The most contaminated soil, including the one classified as solid radioactive waste, is located at the locations of previously existing trenches, in the shafts of research wells.
“According to preliminary estimates, possible radiation doses per month can range from 0.7 mSv to 12 mSv. The values of the predicted doses indicate a high radiation risk, especially in the event of emergency scenarios.”(Acceptable doses for the population are now up to 1 mSv per year, and a number of experts insist on reducing this dose to 0.25 mSv per year)
« It is most likely that the water at the mouth of the three wells is directly related to the water of the central zone of the explosion. There is leakage of radioactive water from the central zone of the explosion to the wellheads, followed by contamination of wellhead sites with radionuclides. Calculations have shown the potential for radioactive water to enter the overlying aquifers from the explosion zone.”(Translated from scientific language this means that the contaminated water from the depths where the explosion occurred has been getting up through the wells for a long time, and its entry into the Shacha and Volga rivers is not excluded).
120 million rubles are needed for reclamation
It cannot be said that the situation is out of control. As stated in the same document, the levels of radionuclides outside Globus-1, in the water of the Shacha River, are still significantly below the norm, mushrooms and berries from nearby forests are not contaminated. Livestock and crop products from relatives settlements cause no concern.
However, experts are sure that it is necessary to create a sarcophagus of wells, eliminate the flow of radioactive water from the explosion zone, compact the soil, and isolate the site for access by people and animals. According to some estimates, reclamation work can cost more than 120 million rubles.
In the annual report of JSC VNIPIpromtekhnologii for 2010 (the same institution that insists that "everything is fine, beautiful marquise") indicated that their specialists are still conducting " ... design and survey work for the rehabilitation of the territory of the Globus-1 facility.
However, according to IG, funding from federal program"Nuclear and Radiation Safety of Russia" at the Ivanovo facility has long been discontinued.
Why blew up nuclear bomb in the center of Russia
The explosion near the village of Galkino is one of 124 peaceful nuclear explosions carried out in the USSR from 1965 to 1988 and one of four that contaminated the territory.
Full official data on the results of all tests have not been published, information on radioactive contamination of the area is incomplete and often contradictory. (True, in 1994 Minatom admitted that “local above-ground pollution around wells” persisted in as many as 24 cases.)
The purpose of the explosion near the village of Galkino - study internal structure Earth by registering shock waves, as well as the search for minerals. Dozens of sensors recorded the movement of geological formations throughout the USSR, which supposedly made it possible to identify oil reserves in the Vologda and Kostroma regions.
Peaceful explosions were also used to create underground tanks for the disposal of hazardous waste, to extinguish oil fires. There were projects where it was supposed to use hundreds of such explosions (for example, to connect the Dead Sea with the Red Sea, turn the northern rivers)
Soil from the site"Globus-1" can be used by terrorists?
Quote from the report of Ivanovo scientists:
“Radioactive soil has no physical protection, which allows unknown “researchers” to open radioactive burial sites with the removal of radioactivity to the surface and further contamination of the industrial site.
At the same time, the possibility of exporting radioactive soil from the Globus-1 industrial site and committing illegal acts against the population and environment Ivanovo region.
Globus 1 will be dangerous for 48,000 years
Data on radiation dose rate at the sites of the facility:
1971 - 150 microroentgen
1997 – 1500 microroentgen
1999 – 3500 microroentgen
2000 – 8000 microroentgen
20 g. - 3000 microroentgens, at a depth of 50 cm, the radiation intensity reaches 20-45 thousand microroentgens
For reference: the maximum threshold of the "background" value is 50 microroentgen
Meanwhile
In terms of oncological incidence, the Ivanovo region ranks 3rd in Russia after Ryazan and Novgorod regions. The incidence rate of malignant neoplasms exceeds the Russian figure by 21%. Every year more than 2,500 people die from cancer in the region, 1,000 of them are of working age.
Photo: Scientists from St. Petersburg examine the object. The inscription on the plate: PROHIBITED ZONE Construction and drilling work within a radius of 450 m is prohibited! Customer - Yaroslavl NGRE, address: Pechora, pos. Power engineers.
The sleep of reason breeds monsters...
[F.Goya]
Ivanovo region, dense forests of the Volga region. The nearest village is four kilometers away. A wide floodplain meadow opens up on the banks of the forest river Shacha. It has rich forbs, most of all wormwood and tansy, nettle and sedge. The tropic, almost hidden by vegetation, leads to the center of the clearing, where an incomprehensible metal sign rises. Around - some kind of pits, pipes poking out of the ground and rickety remnants of a wooden fence. Turning on the device, slowly go there. We are in place - it was here almost 40 years ago that the earth's firmament was shaking in convulsions ...
In the 1960-1980s, by order of the Ministry of Geology in the USSR, a program of deep seismic sounding of the earth's crust was implemented - both to clarify its structure and to identify structures in which it is advisable to further search for mineral deposits (mainly oil and gas). A Special Regional Geophysical Expedition was created. The plan developed during the expedition became the basis state program under the code name "Program-7". It covered the entire country, from Brest to Yakutia.
Seismic exploration is carried out quite simply - at a certain point, a charge is blown up explosive, and sensitive instruments, placed at different distances around, record the time of arrival of seismic waves and their parameters. After several “man-made earthquakes”, a three-dimensional map of the entire thickness is created rocks- after all, a seismic wave passes through different rocks in different ways, and the explosion, as it were, “shines through” the earth. Typically, the seismic method is used to survey specific deposits, and the power of the charges is small. But for the project to explore a vast territory, completely different capacities were required.
In the spring of 1971, in a sparsely populated area of the Ivanovo region, not far from the villages of Galkino and Butusikha, first groups of prospectors appeared, and then heavy equipment: tractors, bulldozers, drilling rigs. According to a number of parameters, a point on the left bank of Shachi was chosen as the location of the future well. The object received the code designation "Globus-1", and was the closest to the capital and densely populated center of the country among 22 of its kind.
Work went on for several months. The local population also participated in them - in felling the forest and other auxiliary work. Everyone believed that in the well "a bomb would explode and they would look for oil." In September, everything was completed, the charge was brought up, lowered to a depth of 610 meters, the well above it was plugged and filled with cement.
This was no ordinary charge. For global program seismic sounding, as mentioned above, required very high charge powers. The decision was made to use nuclear devices. Back in 1966, VNIITF began developing non-military charges, including borehole charges. For seismic sounding, charges with a capacity of 2.3 to 22 kilotons of TNT equivalent were selected (the bomb dropped in 1945 on Hiroshima had a capacity of 13-15 kilotons). For Globus-1, the smallest charge was chosen - 2.3 kt.
On Sunday, September 19, 1971, people from the construction site walked along the only street in the village of Galkino. Knocking on all the houses, they recommended that the windows be sealed with paper crosswise, and that everyone should leave the houses after 19:00. Cars were sent to the village, which were supposed to evacuate people to the Volga in the event of an accident (but this was not announced in advance - in order to prevent panic).
In the evening the earth trembled, windows rattled, cattle roared. The explosion of a camouflage nuclear charge was carried out exactly on schedule. A small earthquake is all that the residents of Galkino and neighboring villages felt. At the facility itself, things were not so rosy: 18 minutes after the explosion, a fountain of water-gas-soil mixture appeared about a meter from the combat well. There was an error in the calculations, the huge pressure destroyed the rocks and the cement layer, and along the wellbore the pressure from the source began to be released into the atmosphere.
Fortunately, mostly inert gases with a short half-life (within a few days and months) turned out to be on the surface. Twenty days later, their output stopped by itself. A relatively small area approximately 200x200 meters in size, including the bank of the Shacha River, is polluted with decay products. But even at the moment of the greatest activity of the "geyser", in the first hours after the explosion, two kilometers from the well, the dose rate did not exceed the natural background. Few long-lived isotopes have come to the surface.
Decontamination was carried out, heavily contaminated soil was buried in several trenches. Then the object was mothballed, and soon people left this place, leaving all the equipment. There was still a lot of work waiting for them all over the country: the deep seismic sounding program continued. The generators written off by the "explosives" and the powerful water pump were taken by the local state farm - such equipment is very useful on the farm. A bulldozer also went there, possibly previously engaged in decontamination work. And for a long time, local residents took out wire, bolts, sheets of metal from the clearing ...
Further events gave rise to a lot of rumors and legends. Teenagers from the surrounding villages, tormented by curiosity, came to the clearing more than once that autumn. In winter, two fell ill - suffered from headaches. They were hospitalized - first to the regional center, then to Ivanovo. There they soon died - according to the official diagnosis, from meningitis.
According to the stories of local residents, the picture is twofold. Most say that nothing special happened, the death rate after the explosion did not increase and the consequences are not felt. Others talk about two-headed calves and relatives who died of cancer. But one way or another, the Ivanovo region has been holding one of the first places in Russia for oncological diseases for many years. True, cases of the disease do not concentrate in the ill-fated Kineshma district.
Scientists visit the facility almost every year, measure the background at different points, and study groundwater. Several years ago, after long ordeals, the Shacha River, which threatened to wash away the site where the well was drilled, was diverted into a new channel. However, the area was not re-decontaminated.
Now these places are a real "bear corner". The village of Butusikha did not survive the period of consolidation of collective farms, which also led to the depopulation of Galkino. Several fires led to the fact that the Galkinites dispersed to other places, and only two residential buildings remained there. The place of the emergency explosion is distinguished only by a rusty "forbidden zone" sign, and heads sticking out in some places above the research wells drilled later. In most of the glade, the radiation background is normal - 10 μR / hour. You can find several spots where this value reaches hundreds of microR/hour (we measured a value of 672 microR/hour, which is a rather modest result).
"Globe-1"
4.16 µSv/hour (416 µR/hour) - background near the research well.
The village of Galkino is one of its two residential courtyards.
A local resident shows the way.
The road to the explosion site after a month of rains is such that
: 57°31′00″ s. sh. 42°36′43″ E d. / 57.516667° N sh. 42.611944° E d.(G)(O) 57.516667 , 42.611944 Globus-1- one of a series of peaceful underground nuclear explosions that occurred on the territory of the USSR from 1965 to 1988. It was held on September 19, 1971 on the banks of the Shachi River, 4 km from the village of Galkino, Kineshma district, Ivanovo region. During the explosion, there was an emergency release of radioactive substances to the surface. There is focal radioactive contamination in the area.
background
Since the 1960s, the USSR began to actively develop a program of peaceful nuclear explosions in the interests of the national economy. A total of 124 explosions were carried out on the territory of the former Soviet Union, which pursued a wide variety of goals - from the study of the earth's crust to the activation of oil and gas production. For the purpose of deep sounding of the earth's crust, by order of the Ministry of Geology, it was decided to conduct an underground nuclear explosion in September 1971. Dozens of sensors were supposed to record the movement of geological layers throughout the USSR.
Chronology of events
For the explosion, due to the large consumption of water for drilling mines, a site was chosen, which was located on the banks of the Shacha River (a tributary of the Volga), four kilometers from the village of Galkino. A group of geologists in the amount of two dozen people arrived to prepare and conduct the experiment at the end of August 1971. Two shafts were drilled, the depth of which was 610 meters. At the bottom of one of them was laid a nuclear charge with a capacity of 2.3 kt (about 9 times weaker than the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima). Many different instruments were lowered to the bottom of another shaft. On the eve of the explosion, police officers warned local residents that there would be a small earthquake, and also gave advice to seal the windows crosswise with paper, leave the house, and take out the cattle, if any. On September 19, 1971, an explosion took place in the evening. At first, everything went according to plan. But at 18 minutes after the explosion, a fountain formed a meter from the well with the charge. Basically, on the surface, along with water and dirt, were inert gases with a short half-life. Approximately twenty days later, their output stopped, but even at the moment of the greatest activity of the "geyser", in the first hours after the explosion, two kilometers from the well, the radiation background did not exceed the natural one. The organizers of the explosion soon left the site.
Consequences and current situation
There was a risk of changing the channel of the Shacha River with the flooding of the well, which could lead to radioactive contamination of the Volga. In 2004, a bypass channel was built.
The "dirty" zone is a platform 100 by 150 meters. Radiation sources - small areas of soil, spots, where the maximum specific activity of the soil reaches 100 thousand becquerels per kilogram, which is tens of thousands of times higher than the norm.
In 1971, when work was being completed, the dose rate at the well was 150 microroentgens per hour (the maximum threshold for the "background" value is 50 microroentgens). In 1997, during measurements at some points of the site, gamma radiation with a capacity of 1.5 thousand micro-roentgens per hour was recorded, in 1999 - 3.5 thousand, in 2000 - 8 thousand micro-roentgens per hour.
Now the situation has stabilized. The radiation power has fallen and is about 3 thousand microroentgens per hour, but everything indicates that the isotopes cesium-137 and strontium-90 continue to come to the surface.
Globus-1 was the closest nuclear explosion to Moscow. The distance in a straight line from Red Square to the test site is 363 kilometers.
Links
Categories:
- Peaceful nuclear explosions on the territory of the USSR
- History of the Ivanovo region
- Kineshma district
- 1971 in Science
- 1971 in the USSR
- September 1971
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See what "Globus-1" is in other dictionaries:
- (Latin globus). A ball that visually depicted the earth's surface or the vault of heaven tutorial. Dictionary of foreign words included in the Russian language. Chudinov A.N., 1910. GLOBE image earth's surface or vault of heaven on the… … Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language
On suspenders (with glasses). 1. Jarg. school Shuttle. iron. Geography teacher. Bytic, 1991 2000. 2. Jarg. they say Shuttle. Bald man. Maksimov, 85. Give the globe to someone. Jarg. they say Shuttle. Hit someone. over the head. Maximov, 85. Walking globe. Jarg. school Shuttle… … Big Dictionary Russian sayings