MUSLUMOVO

- A VILLAGE IN THE SHADOW OF THE NUCLEAR BOMB

For 50 years, the inhabitants of the Russian village of Muslumovo have been living beside a radioactive river. The Techa River has its source 35 kilometers North of Muslumovo near the Mayak Chemical Compound, a factory built in 1945 to secretly produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. In the early 1950s, the factory discharged over 70 million cubic meters of liquid radioactive waste into the Techa River. By 1960, all the other villages along the river had been evacuated, but not Muslumovo. Instead, the village was fenced in and its inhabitants were treated as lab rats, monitored and tested for over three decades. Birth and bodily defects are common in the area and the risk of cancer and other illnesses related to radiation is significantly higher than elsewhere in Russia.