Description: A violent explosion on 29 September 1957 in the Chelyabinsk-40 complex in Kyshtym, southern Urals, involving dry nitrate and acetate salts in high level waste storage tanks, spread radioactivity over a large area later called the "Kyshtym footprint". The total amount of activity released was of the order of 500 000 TBq of fission products. The area contaminated was nearly 20 000 km2, of which 1 000 km2 was above the permissible limit. At the time, over 270 000 people lived in this highly contaminated zone, of whom 10 000 were eventually evacuated. The accident was concealed at the time and only came to light in the 1980s.
Published in: "Nuclear Waste: Is Everything Under Control ?", Environment Alert Bulletins, Feb. 2007
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