This is the story of many, many secrets, and the damage that secrets can do.
After World War II ended, the Soviet Union wanted the Bomb, and they wanted it fast.
They built so-called “secret cities” across the region - hidden from view and omitted
from maps - to jumpstart the Soviet nuclear industry.
One of these cities was Chelyabinsk-40, home to the Mayak plutonium production facility.
The very first Soviet nuke was developed here in the late ‘40s.
And for the residents of the city, secrecy was a way of life.
Here’s Nadezhda Kutepova, a Russian woman who grew up in Chelyabinsk-40:
Of course I saw in my childhood that we are unusual because there were checking systems
and there were soldiers around our city.
My parents told me that our city is secret, but I was not interested to know why we’re
secret.
The Soviet Union was obsessed with keeping the secrets of the Mayak plant...even when
secrecy started to cost lives.
These photos were taken by a documentary crew just a couple years ago, in the area around
the Mayak site.
Starting in 1949, this area played host to one of the most sustained nuclear disasters
in history.
From 1949 to 1956, workers at the Mayak facility discharged radioactive waste into the nearby
Techa river, poisoning the local environment and sickening nearby villagers.
Then, in 1957, some nuclear waste buried underneath the site exploded, sending a radioactive cloud
drifting across 20,000 square kilometers.
With its priority on secrecy, the government’s damage control was haphazard at best.
More than 10,000 civilians were evacuated from the area...but in some cases the process
took as long as 10 years.
Meanwhile, leukemia rates in the area doubled.
Stomach cancer there became twice as common as in Hiroshima.
And according to Alessandro Tesei, a filmmaker on that documentary crew, communities in the
region are still suffering today.
We found that many who were children at the time of the incidents, did not survive more
than 40 years, and that their children have birth malformations and diseases, especially
in the heart.
All in all, the accidents at Mayak may have contaminated half a million people.
It wasn’t until 1989, almost 30 years later, that Russia admitted to accidents at Mayak.
Interestingly, the CIA knew about the 1957 explosion soon after it happened...but they
also kept a tight lid on what they found.
In fact, America’s intel on Mayak was wrapped up in some pretty high-stakes spycraft: the
famous U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down while surveilling the disaster site.
So why would the CIA help hide the Mayak accident?
Why not embarrass the USSR with their own catastrophe?
It’s hard to know...but some have suggested that the CIA didn’t want to stoke fears
in America’s own nuclear industry.
We would have our own growth, and our own disasters, to deal with in the years to come.
The Russian government is more forthright about its history these days...but only to
a point.
Consider Nadezhda Kutepova, the woman who grew up in the closed city of Chelyabinsk-40.
She’s since become an advocate for the victims of the Mayak disasters, and she helped that
documentary crew shoot their film in 2013.
And she’s suffered for her involvement.
Here’s filmmaker Michele Marcolin:
About one year after our visit, a twist in legislation offered the local authorities
the opportunity to present her as a sort of spy and to suggest the possibility of an arrest
for treason, for her ties with foreign countries as leader of an NGO and her relation with
a military nuclear compound.
Nadezhda fled to Paris to escape a government obsessed with keeping its secrets for a little
longer still.
There’s still much we don’t know about the Mayak disasters.
And much of what we do know comes from the careful, partial release of secrets held for
years.
Which means that finding the whole truth still demands going to where you’re not welcome,
and staring those truths in the face.
If you’re looking for more on nuclear accidents, we’ve got a doc for you to check out.
“Animal Planet Presents the world premiere of Life After: Chernobyl, Tuesday, April 26
at 10/9c."