Large-scale radiation accidents in nuclear fuel-cycle facilities are a unique source of information, the use of which may have an important influence on developing nuclear-and radiation-safe installations and setting safety standards. As a rule, due to the scarcity of objective information on radiation incidents and accidents, it is difficult to establish the true physical reason for the physicochemical phenomenon whose development in some stage of the production process proceeded at an uncontrolled rate or in an undesirable direction.In this paper, we demonstrate that when insufficient information is available it is possible to determine the reason for a radiation accident by analysis of indirect data on its consequences. The object of analysis was the radiation incident in the waste storage facility of a radiochemical plant in 1957. In this paper, we do not draw on ecological consequences of the accident. We turn our attention to determination of the essential details and characteristics of development of the physicochemical processes which led to the accident and were the reason for the dispersal of radionuclides over a large distance. As far as we are aware, this problem has not been discussed in the literature.Analysis of Data on the Accident, The accident in the southern Urals in 1957 attracted the attention of the international community after publication of the paper [1] in which, based on analysis of unclassified publications on investigations of the effect of the action of radiation on animals and plants in the Urals region, it was concluded that at the end of 1957 or the beginning of 1958, massive emission of radionuclides into the environment occurred in the Kyshtym region of the Chelyabinsk Oblast (a minimum of 50 MCi for an area of radioactive contamination from 400 to 900 km2). This conclusion proved to be sensational, since Western experts (including intelligence agencies) knew nothing about a radiation accident on such a scale. In a series of publications following this report [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12], various hypotheses were discussed concerning the possible reasons for the accident: radioactive fallout from testing thermonuclear weapons at Novaya Zemlya; intentional dropping of an atomic bomb of power ---20 kilotons TNT in order to determine the stability of the radiochemical plant and its infrastructure; sudden emission of radionuclides as a result of a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in the trench of a storage facility for radioactive waste from production of weapons-grade plutonium; an accident during assembly of a nuclear weapon; a steam or chemical explosion in a radioactive waste storage facility; the result of many repeated emissions of a small amount of radionuclides.In [9], it is noted that in order to explain the emission that occurred, we do not need hypotheses involving such exotic processes as accidental (or intentional) detonation of a nuclear charge and operation of a reactor arising due to selective adsorption of plutonium by the slurry in the trench with the...
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