Post Box City: Chelyabinsk-40 Part II

Part – II

A Secret Facility
A close study of Powers' account of the U-2 mission flight shows that one of the last targets he had overflown was the Chelyabinsk-40, a secret facility town that had not appeared on any official maps.

Mayak is a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant between the towns of Kasli and Kyshtym 72 km northwest of Chelyabinsk in Russia. The plant is in the Ozersk central administrative territorial unit, formerly known as Chelyabinsk-40, later as Chelyabinsk-65, and part of the Chelyabinsk Oblast.

The Mayak plant was built in 1945-48, in a great hurry and in total secrecy, as part of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapon program. The plant's original mission was to make, refine, and machine plutonium for weapons. Five nuclear reactors were built for this purpose. Later the plant came to specialize in reprocessing plutonium from decommissioned weapons, and waste from nuclear reactors.

By photographing the facility, the heat rejection capacity of the reactors' cooling systems could be estimated, thus allowing a calculation of the power output of the reactors. This then allowed the amount of Plutonium being produced to be determined, thus allowing analysts to determine how many nuclear weapons the USSR was producing. Air defence missiles were positioned around Chelyabinsk-40 because of its extreme sensitivity.

In the early years of its operation, the Mayak plant released vast quantities of radioactively contaminated water into several small lakes near the plant, and into the Techa river, whose waters ultimately flow into the Ob River. The downstream consequences of this radiation pollution have yet to be determined.

Accidents

Working conditions at Mayak resulted in severe health hazards and many accidents, with a serious accident occurring in 1957. In the past 45 years, about half a million people in the region have been irradiated in one or more of the incidents, exposing some of them to more than 20 times the radiation suffered by the Chernobyl disaster victims.

The most notable accident occurred on 29 September 1957, when the failure of the cooling system for a tank storing tens of thousands of tons of dissolved nuclear waste resulted in a non-nuclear explosion having a force estimated at about 75 tons of TNT, which released some 20 MCi of radioactivity.

Subsequently, at least 200 people died of radiation sickness, 10,000 people were evacuated from their homes, and 470,000 people were exposed to radiation. People "grew hysterical with fear with the incidence of unknown 'mysterious' diseases breaking out. Victims were seen with skin 'sloughing off' their faces, hands and other exposed parts of their bodies." (Pollock 1978: 9) "Hundreds of square miles were left barren and unusable for decades and maybe centuries. Hundreds of people died, thousands were injured and surrounding areas were evacuated." (Zhores Medvedev, The Australian, 9.12.1976). This nuclear accident, the Soviet Union's worst before the Chernobyl disaster, is categorized as a level 6 "serious accident" on the 0-7 International Nuclear Events Scale.

Russians driving through the area in the 1960s and later found a deserted region where road signs ordered cars to close their windows and not stop for any reason (these directives may still be in force). Russians then relayed this information to Western contacts, and thus Western intelligence agencies came to know of this region. 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 west of the Urals was eventually inferred from research on the effects of radioactivity on plants, animals, and ecosystems, published by Professor Leo Tumerman, former head of the Biophysics Laboratory at the Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow, and associates.

CIA Involvement

According to Gyorgy (1979: 128), who invoked the Freedom of Information Act to open up the relevant CIA files, the CIA knew of the 1957 Mayak accident all along, but kept it secret to prevent adverse consequences for the fledgling USA nuclear industry. "Ralph Nader surmised that the information had not been released because of the reluctance of the CIA to highlight a nuclear accident in the USSR, that could cause concern among people living near nuclear facilities in the USA" (Pollock 1978: 9). Only in 1992, shortly after the fall of the USSR, did the Russians officially acknowledge the accident.

On 10 December 1968, the facility was experimenting with plutonium purification techniques. Two operators were decanting plutonium solutions into the wrong type of vessel. After most of the solution had been poured out, there was a flash of light, and heat.

After the complex had been evacuated, the shift supervisor and radiation control supervisor re-entered the building. The shift supervisor then deceived the radiation control supervisor and entered the room of the incident and possibly attempted to pour the solution down a floor drain, causing a large nuclear reaction that irradiated the shift supervisor with a fatal dose of radiation.

The Mayak plant is associated with two other major nuclear accidents. The first occurred as a result of heavy rains causing Lake Karachay polluted with radioactive waste to release radioactive material into surrounding waters, and the second occurred in 1967 when wind spread dust from the bottom of Lake Karachay, a dried-up radioactively polluted lake (used as a dumping basin for Mayak's radioactive waste since 1951), over parts of Ozersk; over 400,000 people were irradiated.

Present Situation
At present, some residents of Ozersk claim that living there now (2006) poses no risk, because of the decrease in the ambient radiation level over the past 50 years. They also report no problems with their health and the health of Mayak plant workers. These claims lack hard verification, and no one denies that many who worked at the plant in 1950s and '60s subsequently died of the effects of radiation. While the situation has since improved, the administration of the Mayak plant has been repeatedly criticized in recent years for environmentally unsound practices

Today the plant makes tritium and radioisotopes, but no plutonium. In recent years, proposals that the plant reprocess, for money, waste from foreign nuclear reactors have given rise to controversy.

Post Box City: Chelyabinsk-40

Part – I: Gary Powers

In July 1957, Pakistani Prime Minister Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy was requested by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower to establish a secret U.S. intelligence facility in Pakistan and permission for the U-2 Spy-plane to fly from Pakistan. A facility established in Badaber, 10 miles from Peshawar, was a cover for a major communications intercept operation, run by the American NSA. Badaber was an excellent choice because of its proximity to Soviet Central Asia. This enabled monitoring of missile test sites and other communications.

The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed Dragon Lady, is a single-engine, high-altitude aircraft, earlier flown by the Central Intelligence Agency. The U-2 Spy-plane could reach altitudes of 80,000 feet, essentially making it invulnerable to Soviet anti-aircraft weapons of the time. The U-2 was equipped with a state-of-the-art camera designed to snap high-resolution photos from the edge of the atmosphere over hostile countries that included the Soviet Union. These cameras systematically photographed military installations and other important intelligence targets.

U-2 "spy-in-the-sky" was allowed to use the Pakistan Air Force portion of the Peshawar airport to gain vital photo intelligence in an era before satellite observation.

The Incident

On 9 April 1960, the U-2 Spy-plane of the special CIA unit "10-10" crossed the South national boundary of Soviet Union in the area of Pamir Mountains and flew over four Soviet top secret military objects: the Semipalatinsk Test Site, the Tu-95 air base, the Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) test site of the Soviet Air Defence Forces near Saryshagan, and the Tyuratam missile range (future Baikonur Cosmodrome). The plane was detected by the Soviet Air Defense Forces at 4:47 when it flew away by more than 250 km from the Soviet national boundary and avoided several attempts of interception using MiG-19 and Su-9 during the flight. After U-2 left the Soviet air space at 11:32, it was clear that CIA successfully performed an extraordinary intelligence operation. In spite of the negative Soviet diplomatic reaction, the next flight of U-2 Spy-plane from the Badaber airbase was planned on the 1st May.

Gary Powers

Francis Gary Powers (August 17, 1929 – August 1, 1977) was an American pilot and a veteran of several covert aerial reconnaissance missions.

Powers was born in Jenkins, Kentucky, and raised in Pound, Virginia, on the Virginia-Kentucky border. After graduating from Milligan College in Eastern Tennessee, Frank was commissioned in the United States Air Force in 1950. Upon completing his training (52-H) he was assigned to the 468th Strategic Fighter Squadron at Turner Air Force Base, Georgia as an F-84 Thunderjet pilot.
Later in 1956 when he was with the rank of captain he was recruited by the CIA because of his outstanding record in single engine jet aircraft.

He carried out espionage missions using U-2 to snap high-resolution photos of military installations and other important intelligence targets from the edge of the atmosphere over the Soviet Union.

On May 1, 1960, thirteen days before the scheduled opening of an East–West summit conference in Paris, a U.S. Lockheed U-2 left US base in Badaber on a mission to over-fly the Soviet Union, photographing ICBM sites in and around Sverdlovsk and Plesetsk, then land at Bodø in Norway.

Soviet intelligence, including the KGB, had been well aware of U-2 missions since 1956, but lacked the technology to launch counter-measures until 1960. All units of the Soviet Air Defence Forces in the Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Siberia, Ural and later in the U.S.S.R. European Region and Extreme North were on red alert, expecting the planned mission of U-2.

Powers’ U-2, departed from a military airbase Badaber on May 1, 1960. Soon after the plane was detected, Lieutenant General of the Air Force Yevgeniy Savitskiy ordered the air-unit commanders "to attack the violator by all alert flights located in the area of foreign plane's course, and to ram as necessary".

Due to the U-2's extreme operating altitude, Soviet attempts to intercept the plane using fighter aircrafts failed. Moreover, the U-2's course was out of range of several of the nearest SAM sites, and one SAM site even failed to engage the violator since it wasn't on duty that day.

Soviets had shadowed his plane from a lower altitude, then took him down as he crossed over Sverdlosk, which was deep in enemy territory.

According to the official version of the event the U-2 was eventually hit and brought down near Degtyarsk, Ural Region, by a salvo of fourteen SA-2 Guideline (S-75 Dvina) surface-to-air missiles. However, the plane's pilot, Gary Powers, successfully bailed out and parachuted to safety, although in doing so he violated his orders to destroy the aircraft were he to be shot down. To make matters worse, Powers was unable to activate the plane's self-destruct mechanism, as instructed, before he parachuted safely to the ground, right into the hands of the KGB.

Powers had been issued with a modified silver dollar which contained a lethal, shellfish-derived saxitoxin, although in the event he did not use it. In bailing out, he neglected to disconnect his oxygen hose and struggled with it until it broke, enabling him to separate from the aircraft. A subsequent missile salvo also hit the aircraft, further damaging it and would likely have killed Powers outright (he was captured soon afterward).

The SAM command center was unaware that the plane was actually destroyed for more than 30 minutes. One of the Soviet fighters pursuing Powers was also destroyed in the missile salvo.

When the U.S. government learned of Powers' disappearance over the Soviet Union, it issued a cover statement claiming that a "weather plane" had crashed down after its pilot had "difficulties with his oxygen equipment." What U.S. officials did not realize was that the plane landed almost fully intact, and the Soviets recovered its photography equipment, as well as Powers.

Four days after Powers disappeared, NASA issued a very detailed press release noting that an aircraft had "gone missing" north of Turkey. The press release speculated that the pilot might have fallen unconscious while the autopilot was still engaged, even falsely claiming that "the pilot reported over the emergency frequency that he was experiencing oxygen difficulties." To bolster this, a U-2 plane was quickly painted in NASA colors and shown to the media.

After learning of this, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev announced to the Supreme Soviet, and thus the world, that a "spyplane" had been shot down but intentionally made no reference to the pilot. As a result, the Eisenhower Administration, thinking the pilot had died in the crash, authorized the release of a cover story claiming that the plane was a "weather research aircraft" which had strayed into Soviet airspace after the pilot had radioed "difficulties with his oxygen equipment" while flying over Turkey. The Eisenhower White House gracefully acknowledged that this might be the same plane, but still proclaimed that "there was absolutely no deliberate attempt to violate Soviet airspace and never has been", and attempted to continue the facade by grounding all U-2 aircraft to check for "oxygen problems."

On May 7, Khrushchev sprang his trap and announced:

“I must tell you a secret. When I made my first report I deliberately did not say that the pilot was alive and well… and now just look how many silly things the Americans have said”

Not only was Powers still alive, but his plane was also essentially intact. The Soviets managed to recover the surveillance camera and even developed some of the photographs. Powers’ survival pack, including 7500 rubles and jewellery for women, was also recovered.

Ultimately the whole incident set back the peace talks between Khrushchev and Eisenhower for years. The Paris Summit between president Dwight Eisenhower and Nikita Khrushchev collapsed, in large part because Eisenhower refused to accede to Khrushchev's demands that he apologize for the incident. Khrushchev left the talks on May 16.

They interrogated Powers extensively for months before he made a "voluntary confession" and public apology for his part in U.S. espionage. Powers plead guilty and was convicted of espionage on August 19 and sentenced to 3 years’ imprisonment and 7 years of hard labor. He served one and three-quarter years of the sentence before being exchanged for Soviet KGB Colonel Vilyam Fisher (aka Rudolf Abel) February 10, 1962. The exchange occurred on the Glienicke Bridge connecting Potsdam, East Germany, to West Berlin.

Today a large part of the wreck as well as many items from the survival pack are on display at the Central Museum of Armed Forces in Moscow. A small piece of the plane was returned to the United States and is on display at the National Cryptologic Museum.

Another result of the crisis was that the U.S. Corona spy satellite project was accelerated, while the CIA accelerated the development of the A–12 OXCART supersonic spyplane that first flew in 1962 and began developing the Lockheed D-21/M-21 unmanned drone.

The incident severely compromised Pakistan security and worsened relations between the Soviet Union and Pakistan. As an attempt to put up a bold front, Pakistani General Khalid Mahmood Arif while commenting on the incident stated that, "Pakistan felt deceived because the US had kept her in the dark about such clandestine spy operations launched from Pakistan’s territory." The communications wing at Badaber was formally closed down on January 7, 1970.

Though Powers claimed he had not divulged details of the U-2 program, he received a cold reception upon his return to the United States. Initially, he was criticized for having failed to activate his aircraft’s self-destruct charge designed to destroy the camera, photographic film, and related classified parts of his aircraft before capture. In addition, others criticized him for deciding not to use an optional CIA-issued suicide pin to avoid pain and suffering in case of torture. After being debriefed extensively by the CIA, Lockheed, and the USAF, on March 6, 1962, he appeared before a Senate Armed Services Select Committee. During the proceeding it was determined that Powers followed orders, did not divulge any critical information to the Soviets, and conducted himself “as a fine young man under dangerous circumstances.”

Return to US

After his return, Powers worked for Lockheed as a test pilot, later he co-wrote a book called Operation Overflight: A Memoir of the U-2 Incident , and then worked as an airborne traffic reporter for radio station KGIL in the San Fernando Valley. He was then hired by Los Angeles television station KNBC to pilot their new "telecopter", a helicopter equipped with externally mounted 360 degree cameras.

Powers died on August 1, 1977, when, upon his return from covering brush fires in Santa Barbara County, his helicopter ran out of fuel and crashed along with KNBC cameraman George Spears.

Many have wondered or speculated on how an experienced pilot such as Powers could have allowed the aircraft to run out of fuel. Allegedly Powers knew his helicopter had a fuel gauge error. When Powers fuel gauge indicator displayed "Empty", he actually had enough fuel for thirty minutes of flight time remaining. Apparently an aviation mechanic fixed the fuel gauge in the KNBC helicopter, but Powers was not told of the correction. When he was returning to Burbank from the brush fire coverage Powers fuel gauge displayed "Empty", but thinking he had thirty minutes of flight time remaining, he continued flying and subsequently crashed. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

In 1998, information was declassified revealing that Powers’ fateful mission had actually been a joint USAF/CIA operation. In 2000, on the 40th anniversary of Powers being shot down, his family was finally presented with his posthumously awarded Prisoner of War Medal, Distinguished Flying Cross and National Defense Service Medal. In addition, then CIA Director George Tenet authorized Powers to posthumously receive the CIA "Director's Medal" for extreme fidelity and courage in the line of duty.

According to his son, when asked how high he was when flying on May 1, 1960, Powers would often reply, "not high enough".

End of Part I