An accident at Laboratory B is an outbreak of radioactive radiation resulting from an uncontrolled chain reaction during critical assembly studies at a very low-power nuclear reactor in Laboratory V in 1954 (later the Physics and Power Engineering Institute in Obninsk ). In the accident 10 people were injured, not one was killed. This small accident was the largest in the entire history of the Physics and Energy Institute and the Obninsk NPP that arose on its basis in 1956. Thanks to the family legend of the ballet dancer Nikolai Tsiskaridze, a minor radiation accident was known in the media as an explosion at the Obninsk NPP , as a result of which his mother’s husband allegedly died, and she became a blackout .
| Accident in Laboratory “B” | |
|---|---|
| Type of | radiation accident |
| A country |  the USSR |
| A place | Object "B" |
| date of | 1954 |
| Dead | 0 |
| Injured | 10 |
Content
- 1 accident
- 2 "Explosion at Obninsk NPP"
- 3 notes
- 4 Bibliography
Crash
In 1954, Laboratory “B” (later the Physics and Power Engineering Institute in Obninsk ), on the basis of which the world's first nuclear power station was to be launched later, conducted, among other things, studies on critical assembly in a very low-power nuclear reactor . Laboratory staff collected critical mass from rods containing uranium. It was about one in the morning, and in a hurry to complete the experiment, scientists added too much uranium . As a result, an uncontrolled chain reaction arose, leading to an outbreak of radioactive radiation . All participants in the experiment, with the exception of one, fled the laboratory. The only remaining one, Alexander Malyshev, rushed to the scene of the accident - to stop the chain reaction [1] .
All victims of the accident were sent for examination to the Institute of Biophysics in Moscow, where the effect of radioactive radiation on the human body was studied. Ten days later, scientists returned to continue work. Alexander Malyshev had an amputated wrist, which took the strongest radiation impact [1] .
At the request of Dmitry Bokhintsev, the head of Laboratory B, the work to eliminate the consequences of the accident, which took two days, was led by Oleg Kazachkovsky . The liquidators of the accident, as well as its participants, were irradiated. According to Kazachkovsky, as a result of the accident there was not a single radioactive release into the atmosphere, and not a single person was killed. Oleg Kazachkovsky, who later headed the Physics and Energy Institute for a long time, also claimed in 2008 that this accident was the largest in the history of the Physics and Energy Institute and which happened two years after the accident, in 1956, at the Obninsk NPP [1] .
"Explosion at Obninsk NPP"
In March 2008, the ballet dancer Nikolai Tsiskaridze gave an interview to the magazine “Everything for Women”, which was published simultaneously with the magazine in the newspaper “ Arguments and Facts ”. Then the interview was repeatedly published on various sites on the Internet. In this interview, Tsiskaridze, in particular, said:
| Long before my birth, my mother worked at the Obninsk NPP . In the early 60s there was an explosion, as in Chernobyl . A lot of people died there, including my mother’s husband. And those people who had at least some relation to those who died there were liquidated, deported or banned from traveling abroad. The latter included my mother. She was very homesick because she loved to travel [2] . |
Since there were no explosions at the Obninsk NPP in the 1960s or in any other decades, the incident, which Tsiskaridze spoke about in an interview, could only be identified as the largest accident at Laboratory B in 1954. (One of the Obninsk newspapers also assumed that Tsiskaridze could be confused with the Obninsk Chelyabinsk-40 , and with the “explosion at the Obninsk NPP” - a really large-scale, with human casualties, Kyshtym accident in 1957.) There were no human victims in the Obninsk accident, and the husband mother of Nikolai Tsiskaridze could not perish in her. She herself was not allowed to travel abroad not because of the accident, but, most likely, simply because she had a certain level of access to secret work - like any employee of the USSR Ministry of Medium Machine-Building . The Tsiskaridze maxim about the “explosion at the Obninsk NPP” could either be a broadcast of a family legend invented by a mother for her son to explain the disappearance of her husband, or simply an aberration of the memory of Nikolai Tsiskaridze himself [1] .
The liquidator of the 1954 accident at Laboratory B, Oleg Kazachkovsky, commented on Tsiskaridze’s statement about the “explosion at the Obninsk NPP” with a famous joke:
| ... Two people meet, and one says to the other: “Have you heard that Ivanov won the lottery for 100 thousand dollars?” “Yes,” the second answers, “I heard. Only not Ivanov, but Petrov, not 100 thousand, but 100, not dollars, but rubles, not in the lottery, but in cards, and did not win, but lost! ” [1] |
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 Vorontsova Marina. The explosion at the Obninsk NPP, of which only Nikolai Tsiskaridze knows only // You and us. - March 28, 2008.
- ↑ Grigoryan Irina. Nikolai Tsiskaridze: the chance to return to the scene was one in a million // Arguments and Facts . - March 18, 2008.
Bibliography
- Grigoryan Irina. Nikolai Tsiskaridze: the chance to return to the scene was one in a million // Everything for a woman. - March 18, 2008. - No. 12 .
- Grigoryan Irina. Nikolai Tsiskaridze: the chance to return to the scene was one in a million // Arguments and Facts . - March 18, 2008.
- Vorontsova Marina. The explosion at the Obninsk NPP, which only Nikolai Tsiskaridze knows about // You and us. - March 28, 2008.