The Soviet government in 1968 disguised the EURT
area by creating the East-Ural Nature
Reserve, which
prohibited any unauthorised access to the
affected area.Rumours of a nuclear mishap somewhere in the vicinity of Chelyabinsk had long been circulating
in the West. That there had been a
serious nuclear accident east of the Urals was eventually demonstrated by Zhores Medvedev, who,
after his reference to the disaster
in a Western publication was derided by Western nuclear industry sources, showed that numerous
Soviet scientific publications on the
effects of radiation on plant life, supposedly derived from laboratory experiments, were in fact thinly disguised
descriptions of the area contaminated
by the disaster.[12]According to Gyorgy,[13] who invoked the Freedom of Information
Act to gain access to the relevant Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) files, the CIA knew of the 1957 Mayak accident all along, but kept it secret to prevent
adverse consequences for the fledgling
American nuclear industry. In 1990 the Soviet government declassified documents pertaining to the
disaster.[14][15]
Aftermath cont.: