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.: