The Kyshtym disaster was a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on 29 September 1957 at Mayak, a plutonium production site in Russia for nuclear weapons and nuclear fuel reprocessing plant of the Soviet Union.
The event occurred in Ozyorsk, Chelyabinsk Oblast, a closed city built around the Mayak plant. It measured as a Level 6 disaster on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), making it the third-most serious nuclear accident ever recorded, behind the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and the Chernobyl disaster (both Level 7 on the INES). At least 22 villages were exposed to radiation from the disaster, with a total population of around 10,000 people evacuated. Some were evacuated after a week, but it took almost 2 years for evacuations to occur at other sites.
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