V4N4

"I was always swimming there. And we went there to pick berries and to collect mushrooms. We didn't know there was something wrong until many people became ill. We called it River disease".

Mayak, South East of the Urals, has been the key facility for the production plutonium weapons. Accidental and deliberate releases of nuclear waste exposed 272,000 people to high levels of radiation. It is regarded as one of the most unsafe and most polluting nuclear plants in the world. It will play an important future role in storage and reprocessing of foreign nuclear material nonetheless.