The region is ringed with nuclear facilities, but the most notorious is the Mayak Production Association, a reprocessing plant located about 50 miles outside of Chelyabinsk, near a town called Novogorny. Since then, there have been half a dozen fatal incidents, including a 1967 explosion of cesium-137, a highly dangerous isotope, that spewed radioactive particles over a large area. The mayor of Novogorny, Aleksandr Genilo, says his small city still draws its drinking water from Karachai Lake, where the complex dumps its radioactive waste. But the authorities don't believe that when the wind blows, people here all get headaches. They say it's just radiophobia.
Russian authorities have plenty to hide.
But I was born in 1939 and there used to be 50 people in the village my age, and now no more than 10 are left, and most of them are oncological cases. At the Novogorny hospital, the medical director, who would only give his name as Yuri G., says there hasn't been a single normal birth there in two years. In a population of 10,000, we have 30 or 40 new cases of cancer every year. Dr. G. says he fears retaliation from officials for talking about the problem. At his school, chronic illnesses are so common that a third of his 230 students are out sick on any given day.