Chernobyl on the Volga

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_National_Economy#Problems

Another catastrophe resulted from the Globus-1 explosion near village Galkino, 40 kilometers from Kineshma city on September 19, 1971.[4] It was a very small underground explosion of 2.5 kilotons that was a part of the seismological program for oil and gas exploration. Unexpectedly a large amount of radioactive gases went out through the cracks in the ground, creating a significant highly radioactive spot of two kilometers in diameter in the relatively densely populated area of European Russia. To make things worse, a small tributary of the Volga, the Shacha, changed its location and threatened to flood the very hole of the explosion. This could have led to nuclear pollution of the entire Volga region.

WI it did?
 
For starters, political and social chaos on a level that would have made the 1917 October Revolution look like a beach party.
 
I've just checked where Kineshma is on google maps, My god man! How much Volga did you have to irradiate!

My gut feeling is that the Soviets would have denied that any such thing happened, hoping that the limited radioactivity of a 2.5kt groundburst would be diluted enough by the river for cancer rates not to jump high enough to attract attention. Though there would be hell to pay when fishermen in the Caspian start picking up three eyed fish.
 
The radiation levels wouldn't take long to be noticed. The Soviets would deny it, but the levels would easily reach the Caspian, and while they can ignore it there, by the time it hits the north coast of Iran, we have a big problem.

Several of Russia's major cities will not have radioactive drinking water, which depending on how bad the radiation levels are, could result in the water of all the Volga ending up contaminated. The result of that on The USSR's economy is beyond devastating, worse still when the pollution forces the cities on the river - including Volgograd, Saratov, Astrakhan, Ulyanovsk, Kazan and Nizhny Novogrod - to be evacuated. Between those cities alone, you are talking, bare minimum, 10-12 million people. Then you have all of the towns and cities along the river, and there is a whack of them.

The water used to water at 50% of the USSR's crops is now unusable, too. Or at least, it's only usable until the level of radioactivity in the food becomes obvious, which it will if they attempt to export any of it.

Result - economic catastrophe once it becomes clear that all of these people must be moved, and a huge portion of the USSR is radioactively contaminated. The nation, economically, goes from troubled (which it was in 1971) to devastated.

Bigger problem - this is the height of the Cold War, and if the USSR is this seriously damaged economically, the chances of them trying to use their military to save their butts (i.e. invade Iran and the Gulf states) is extremely high. They'll need to buy food in vast amounts, and they'll need a suitable huge source of hard currency to do that - which they could only get from having a huge resource base, which Iran and the Gulf states have.

The Red Army cannot invade the Gulf states without forcing a Western response, particularly since this is pre-oil crisis and most of the world is absolutely, critically reliant on that oil. Allowing the USSR to own the majority of the world's oil supplies is NOT something the USA can allow, PERIOD. Hence, we easily could get WWIII as a result......
 
I've just had a terrible thought, the prevailing winds there are going to blow any readiocative gas (perhaps from another power station abandoned in haste) over St. Petersburg, Finlnd and Sweden. Moscow may be wiped out, Helsinki abandoned, the Gulf of Finalnd could suffer terribly.
 
My gut feeling is that it actually wouldn't be so bad as some people here are saying. A 2.5 kiloton explosion is quite small, and though it's a groundburst, the enormous volume of the Volga and the Caspian will serve to greatly dilute any radioactive material released. Plus, a lot of it (not all of it, but a lot), probably has a fairly short half-life, and will therefore go away in a few months or so. However, I'm no expert, and that's just my gut.
 
Guys, instead of automatic switch to usual fear-mongering "Gawd, those Russkie Commies are going to destroy their own environment and then attack whole world as rabid dogs they are", try to think rationally (and remember that Yablokov makes Chomsky look almost rational in comparison, so anything traced to him is better be independently sourced). How much of radioactive contaminant can 2.5KT nuke unleash comparing to amount of stuff Chernobyl reactor threw around? Why didn't massive American tests in Nevada (tourist attraction in early Las Vegas) destroy American Southwest and tiny Globus is going to irrevocably contaminate whole Russia? Why didn't Chernobyl (next door to mighty Pripyat river, which drains in Dnepr soon after that) lead to serious contamination of Dnepr? Those kinds of technicalities. My take on the events is as follows: amount of contaminant is seriously not enough to pollute Volga (this is the weakest link, I am seriously unsure about parameters of the Globus-1), as American and Soviet surface tests didn't do any lasting global damage. Besides, Volga is effectively a chain of ponds now, separated by a cascade of dams, and each reservoir is going to act as serious holding facility for any contaminated sediment trying to get downstream (silting is serious problem IOTL, but it would be a blessing ITTL). One more thing to consider, when one is saying that "50% of Russia drinks Volga water" it doesn't mean that this water comes from Volga downstream of Kineshma. Volga isn't Nile, it has tributaries.
 
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