Ozyorsk, Chelyabinsk Oblast

For other places with the same name, see Ozyorsk.
Ozyorsk (English)
Озёрск (Russian)
-  Town  -

A view of Ozyorsk
Ozyorsk
Location of Ozyorsk in Chelyabinsk Oblast
Coordinates: 55°45′N 60°43′E / 55.750°N 60.717°E / 55.750; 60.717Coordinates: 55°45′N 60°43′E / 55.750°N 60.717°E / 55.750; 60.717
Coat of arms
Flag
Administrative status (as of September 2011)
Country Russia
Federal subject Chelyabinsk Oblast
Administratively subordinated to Town of Ozyorsk[1]
Administrative center of Town of Ozyorsk[1]
Municipal status (as of September 2011)
Urban okrug Ozyorsky Urban Okrug[1]
Administrative center of Ozyorsky Urban Okrug[1]
Head Oleg Kostikov
Statistics
Population (2010 Census) 82,164 inhabitants[2]
- Rank in 2010 202nd
Time zone YEKT (UTC+05:00)[3]
Founded 1945
Town status since 1994
Postal code(s)[4] 456780-456790
Dialing code(s) +7 35130
Official website
Ozyorsk on Wikimedia Commons

Ozyorsk or Ozersk (Russian: Озёрск) is a closed[5] town in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia. Population: 82,164 (2010 Census);[2] 91,760 (2002 Census).[6]

History

It was founded on the shores of Lake Irtyash in 1947.[7] Until 1994, it was known as Chelyabinsk-65, and even earlier, as Chelyabinsk-40 (the digits are the last digits of the postal code, and the name is that of the nearest big city; which was a common practice of giving names to closed towns). Codenamed City 40, Ozersk was the birthplace of the Soviet nuclear weapons programme after the second world war.[8][9] In 1994, it was granted town status and renamed Ozyorsk.

Administrative and municipal status

Within the framework of administrative divisions, it is, together with six rural localities, incorporated as the Town of Ozyorsk—an administrative unit with the status equal to that of the districts.[1] As a municipal division, the Town of Ozyorsk is incorporated as Ozyorsky Urban Okrug.[1]

Economy

Ozyorsk was and remains a closed town because of its proximity to the Mayak plant, one of the sources of Soviet plutonium during the Cold War, and now a Russian facility for processing nuclear waste and recycling nuclear material from decommissioned nuclear weapons.[9]

The plant itself covers an area of approximately 90 km² and employs about 15,000 people.[9]

The Mayak is primarily engaged in reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from the nuclear submarines and icebreakers and from nuclear power plants. Commercially, it produces cobalt-60, iridium-192, carbon-14 and establishes conversion production with use of radiative technologies applying wasteless technologies.

The town's coat of arms depicts a flame-colored salamander.

Southern-Urals Construction Department (ЗАО "Южноуральское управление строительства") is another major enterprise. Its activities include construction for atomic industry needs, production of concrete constructions and construction materials.

Main products of Plant of Wiring Products #2 (ЗАО "Завод электромонтажных изделий №2") are low-voltage devices for military-industrial establishments.

Radioactive contamination and the 1957 disaster

Main article: Kyshtym disaster

Ozyorsk and the surrounding countryside have been heavily contaminated by industrial pollution from the Mayak plutonium plant since the late 1940s. The Mayak plant was one of the largest producers of weapons-grade plutonium for the Soviet Union during much of the Cold War, particularly during the Soviet atomic bomb program. Built and operated with great haste and disregard for safety, between 1945 and 1957 the plant dumped and released large amounts of solid, liquid and gaseous radioactive material into the area immediately around the plant. Over time, the sum of radionuclide contamination is estimated to 2-3 times the release from the explosions from the Chernobyl accident.

In 1957, the Mayak plant was the site of a major disaster, among all the other such accidents, releasing more radioactive contamination than Chernobyl, again. An improperly stored underground tank of high-level liquid nuclear waste exploded, contaminating thousands of square kilometres of territory, now known as the Eastern Ural Radioactive Trace (EURT). The matter was quietly and secretly covered up, and few either inside or outside Russia were aware of the full scope of the disaster until 1980.

Before the 1957 accident, much of the waste was dumped into the Techa River, which it severely contaminated as well as residents of dozens of riverside villages such as Muslyumovo, who relied on the river as their sole source of drinking, washing and bathing water. After the 1957 accident, dumping in the Techa River officially ceased, but the waste material was dumped in convenient shallow lakes near the plant instead, of which 7 have been officially identified. Of particular concern is Lake Karachay, the closest lake to the plant (now notorious as the most contaminated place on Earth[10]) where roughly 4.4 exabecquerels of high-level liquid waste (75-90% of the total radioactivity released by Chernobyl) was dumped and concentrated in the shallow 45-hectare (110-acre) lake[11] over several decades.

In addition to the radioactive risks, the airborne lead and particulate soot levels in Ozyorsk (along with much of the Ural industrial region) are also very high—roughly equal to the levels encountered along busy roadsides in the era predating unleaded gasoline and catalytic converters—due to the presence of numerous lead smelters.

This, along with Richland, Washington, were the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium for use in cold war atomic bombs.[12][13]

The Chelyabinsk region has been reported as being one of the most polluted places on Earth, having previously been a center of production of weapons-grade plutonium.[14]

Education and culture

There are seventeen different cultural and public-service institutions.

There are sixteen secondary schools, two schools specializing in the English language, one gymnasium, physics-mathematics lyceum, three professional colleges, Southern-Ural Polytechnical College, Music College, Ozyorsk Engineering Institute (an affiliate of National Research Nuclear University MEPhI), and affiliates of Yekaterinburg's and Chelyabinsk's universities.

Films about Ozyorsk

Main article: City 40 (film)

City 40 is a documentary film about the town, by Samira Goetschel, released in July 2016.[8]

References

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Resolution #161
  2. 1 2 Russian Federal State Statistics Service (2011). "Всероссийская перепись населения 2010 года. Том 1" [2010 All-Russian Population Census, vol. 1]. Всероссийская перепись населения 2010 года (2010 All-Russia Population Census) (in Russian). Federal State Statistics Service. Retrieved June 29, 2012.
  3. ↑ Правительство Российской Федерации. Федеральный закон №107-ФЗ от 3 июня 2011 г. «Об исчислении времени», в ред. Федерального закона №271-ФЗ от 03 июля 2016 г. «О внесении изменений в Федеральный закон "Об исчислении времени"». Вступил в силу по истечении шестидесяти дней после дня официального опубликования (6 августа 2011 г.). Опубликован: "Российская газета", №120, 6 июня 2011 г. (Government of the Russian Federation. Federal Law #107-FZ of June 31, 2011 On Calculating Time, as amended by the Federal Law #271-FZ of July 03, 2016 On Amending Federal Law "On Calculating Time". Effective as of after sixty days following the day of the official publication.).
  4. ↑ Почта России. Информационно-вычислительный центр ОАСУ РПО. (Russian Post). Поиск объектов почтовой связи (Postal Objects Search) (Russian)
  5. ↑ Law #287-ZO specifies that the borders of Ozyorsky Urban Okrug match the borders of the closed administrative-territorial formation of the town of Ozyorsk.
  6. ↑ Russian Federal State Statistics Service (May 21, 2004). "Численность населения России, субъектов Российской Федерации в составе федеральных округов, районов, городских поселений, сельских населённых пунктов – районных центров и сельских населённых пунктов с населением 3 тысячи и более человек" [Population of Russia, Its Federal Districts, Federal Subjects, Districts, Urban Localities, Rural Localities—Administrative Centers, and Rural Localities with Population of Over 3,000] (XLS). Всероссийская перепись населения 2002 года [All-Russia Population Census of 2002] (in Russian). Retrieved August 9, 2014.
  7. ↑ Domus, monthly review of architecture interiors design art. Editoriale Domus S.p.A. 2004.
  8. 1 2 Samira Goetschel (20 July 2016). "'The graveyard of the Earth': inside City 40, Russia's deadly nuclear secret". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 July 2016.
  9. 1 2 3 William Langewiesche (29 April 2008). The Atomic Bazaar: Dispatches from the Underground World of Nuclear Trafficking. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. pp. 33–. ISBN 978-1-4299-3434-3.
  10. ↑ Lenssen, "Nuclear Waste: The Problem that Won't Go Away", Worldwatch Institute, Washington, D.C., 1991: 15.
  11. ↑ Tabak, Faruk. "Allies As Rivals: The U.S., Europe and Japan in a Changing World-system". Retrieved 9 August 2016. Lake Karachay, a shallow pond about 45 hectares in area.
  12. ↑ Mark Peplow (27 March 2013). Military history:Dinner at the fission chips. Nature.
  13. ↑ Rob Edwards (18 March 2013). "The radioactive legacy of the search for plutopia". New Scientist.
  14. ↑ Andrew Osborn (27 July 2011). "How Chelyabinsk became synonymous with pollution". The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group. Retrieved 15 November 2013.

Sources

Further reading

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