To the east of the Ural Mountains of vast Russia, there is a beautiful little lake, but it has long been nicknamed "the lake of death" or "the lake of invisible killers" - that is, the lake of death. Lake Karachay. Like Gruinard Island in England, the lake was not capable of killing until human intervention made it so. In the case of Lake Karachay, it was due to the activities of a nearby nuclear facility, which is the Mayak nuclear waste treatment plant. The activities of the Mayak nuclear facility have made simply standing next to the lake synonymous with suicide, as the lake can kill anyone standing near it, even within minutes.
The beginning
The name Karachay means "black lake" in some
local languages in Turkey. Lake Karachay is located near the city of
Chelyabinsk, and close to it are several other large lakes. The fact that a
large number of lakes are concentrated in this area is one of the reasons why
it was chosen as the site of the Mayak nuclear plant in 1946. The Mayak plant
was built by the Soviet government to develop the country's first nuclear bomb
project, as nuclear reactors must always be water-cooled.
Due to the urgency of the nuclear program, the regulations on radiation safety here were ignored, and so the largest lake in the region - Lake Kyzyltash – which was used only to provide cooling water for the reactors, had been contaminated by radioactive waste from the plant. So the plant needed another lake to bury and cool down the high-temperature radioactive waste, and that was Lake Karachay. Concrete waste containers were placed underneath Lake Karachay until they were cooled down and ready to be buried underground.
 |
| Lake Karachay is in the foreground, in the background is the Mayak nuclear facility, and in the upper left corner is Lake Kyzyltash |
The Mayak
explosion
Lake Karachay was used this way until September 29th, 1957,
when one of the 14 radioactive waste containers in Mayak exploded, the explosion
was so great that the walls of several buildings up to 200 meters away were
blown off. After the explosion, a column of smoke and dust rose more than a
thousand meters, the fallout emitted an orange-red light and was deposited on
buildings in the area and local people, and everywhere recorded an increase in
the amount of radiation. This is the second-worst nuclear disaster in history,
just behind the Chernobyl disaster which happened nearly 30 years later.
The accident caused widespread pollution in the entire Mayak region as well as a large area in the Northeastern Soviet Union. The incident prompted the government to find a way to handle the radioactive material and avoid international attention. The radioactive dump has since expanded and spanned several lakes and includes the nearby Techa River, which is home to many villages. Approximately 65% of the people living along the Techa River have been reported to have contracted illnesses caused by radiation exposure.
 |
| An abandoned building after the Mayak disaster |
The lake of death
For 45 years, Mayak has always been kept a secret from
foreigners. It was not until 1992 that Russian President Boris Yeltsin decided
to open the area, and Western scientists had the opportunity to penetrate
Mayak. Soon after, this place was declared one of the most polluted places on
the planet. Over half a century, an estimated 4 billion liters of water in the
region has been heavily radioactive, with Lake Karachay being the worst. Just
standing by the lake for a few minutes, an adult can absorb as much radiation
as standing in front of the Chernobyl plant at dawn on April 26th,
1986.
In the 1960s, Lake Karachay began to dry up, and the surrounding radioactivity began to increase. Especially, in 1968, a drought caused the lake to dry up, and the wind carried radioactive fallout and irradiated more than half a million people. The Soviet government had to act. From 1978 to 1986, the lake was gradually filled with more than ten thousand concrete blocks to prevent the movement of sediment on the bottom of the lake. Work resumed in 2000 and the last part of the lake was filled in 2016.
 |
| Lake Karachay after being filled, viewed from satellite |
The ending
