USSR's Old Nuclear Site A Toxic Wasteland Looted Of Radioactive Scrap

[hatrack]

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"Mr. Strilchuk moves forward. The sights are otherworldly. The blasts generated such heat that the surface of the steppe was liquefied and splashed onto the surviving steel and concrete. The substance remains - a thick and dark lacquer, frozen as it oozed and dripped. It is also underfoot. Marble-size balls of glassified soil crunch beneath Mr. Strilchuk's boots. He reads his radiation meter. Safer to stand here, he says. Not there.

Bits of life have returned around him. Grass pokes through the baked soil. Birds bank on the wind. Scattered here and there are the droppings of sheep, goats, horses and cows, which wander the test site to graze. There are signs of man as well: empty vodka bottles on the baked earth, torn bags of potato chips.

The test range is a peculiar post-Soviet legacy. In an area roughly the size of Israel, the Joe One site is just one of several places where the hundreds of bombs were detonated. Across this vast stretch, no one who wanders the range can be sure of the risks. No one who lives nearby can be sure the meat in markets did not come from animals that grazed on radioactive grass. No one knows where all of the irradiated metal has gone.

What is known is this: The site has been stripped almost bare. Scavenging gangs have yanked the thick copper cables from the ground and dismantled and carted away the parked aircraft and fighting vehicles. Almost everything has vanished. Mr. Strilchuk recalled seeing the blast-warped barrel of an artillery piece a few years ago, jutting from a partly melted bunker. It too has disappeared - radioactive waste converted to scrap. "They take the metal and sell it," he said.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/03/international/asia/03bomb.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1109858402-myRgF7RM6mmICkW99JvW9g