Society News Archive

27 October 1999

In this week's issue (22 October 1999), Science Magazine reports on criticality accidents that occurred at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy in a residential suburb of Moscow in the early 1970s.

The article which is listed in the contents of this issue on Science's website (http://www.sciencemag.org), states that the most serious accident occurred on 26 May 1971. According to the report, workers were in a hurry to shut down a procedure and this resulted in the creation of a critical mass. A technician and a researcher died shortly after the accident.

A summary or the full text of the article can be ordered on the Science Website. Subcribers of Science can read the article on page 653.