MOSCOW – Consider it or not, there’s a lake in Russia named ‘Lake Karachay’, typically spelled as ‘Lake Karachi’, though it has no reference to the Pakistani port metropolis, Karachi.
Ozero Karachi is a pure lake that emerged in 1951 masking a floor space of three km2 having a median depth of three meters (10 ft).
It boasts a complete water quantity of zero.01 kmthree and has a complete shoreline of seven kilometers.
The lake, which sits at an elevation of 100 meters (329 ft), drains a watershed that covers 731 km2 and has a residence time of 197 days.
Ozero Karachi additionally holds historic significance because the Soviet Union used it as a dumping web site for radioactive waste from Mayak, the close by nuclear waste storage and reprocessing facility.
Curiously, Pakistan’s metropolis Karachi additionally holds distinction by way of air pollution however the Russian lake is likely one of the most polluted locations on Earth because it gathered some four.44 exabecquerels (EBq) of radioactivity over lower than one sq. mile of water, together with three.6 EBq of caesium-137 and zero.74 EBq of strontium-90.
The sediment of the lake mattress is estimated to be composed nearly solely of high-level radioactive waste deposits to a depth of roughly 11 ft.
As of December 2016, the lake’s standing is totally infilled, utilizing particular concrete blocks, rock, and filth. It had been fully backfilled in November 2015, then monitored earlier than inserting the ultimate layer of rock and filth.
Monitoring knowledge confirmed ‘clear discount of the deposition of radionuclides on the floor’ after 10 months
The title ‘karachay’ or twisted as Karachi means ‘black water’ or ‘black sea’ in a number of Northwestern Turkic languages, together with Tatar.