Everybody knows that Chernobyl was the one of the biggest nuclear catastrophe in history. But how many have ever heard of the second biggest? The Mayak Enterprise nuclear plant in the Southern Urals, Russia was the second compared to Chernobyl and was one of the dark secrets of the cold war. Basically if you were to multiply Chernobyl by one hundred you would get the tragic happenings that happened at Mayak Enterprise. It was one of the Soviet Union’s primary nuclear complexes, a massive set of fuel production facilities, plutonium production reactors, and reprocessing and waste storage buildings set on the Mayak Facility. After World War II, Russians had seen that the atomic bomb had been settled, so the Russians started the nuclear race to manufacture one for them self. The base of this project was the future Mayak plant, in turn was used to produce plutonium. The plant started to be built very quickly and in utmost secrecy during the period 1945-1948 unknown to the Russian people. The city and the complex were then called Chelyabinsk-40 and Chelyabinsk-65. Then finally, from 1994 they renamed it Ozersk. …show more content…
The 400-liter tank was on a platform that was used for measurements involving solutions; after, the tank was to be drained into individual 6-liter containers. But this time, the tank contained uranyl nitrate solution (90% U-235) and was being drained for another experiment. (johnstonsarchive.net) After filling several 6-liter containers, operators decided to avoid the standard procedure to save time. Three of the four operators unbolted the tank and lifted it to pour directly into containers. The company of the operators provided sufficient neutron reflection to cause a criticality digression, producing a flash of light and ejecting solution as high as the ceiling, 5 meters above the tank.