Russia's remote Kurgan region, near Kazakhstan, is the location of about one-sixth of the country's uranium reserves. A subsidiary of the state nuclear agency is expanding its operations there. But for many local residents, the growth of the mines means not greater wealth, but greater dangers.
Viktor Kozlov used to drive a tractor on a Soviet-era state farm, but when times got tough, he moved to the coal-rich Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk and started selling coal to residents there to heat their homes.
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka says Russia is blocking deliveries of Kazakh oil amid a tariff dispute with Moscow, Minsk's regular supplier.
It once was a proud and prosperous part of the Soviet Union’s robust uranium-mining industry. But today, residents of northern Kazakhstan’s Saumalkol call their home a ghost town.
Forty years of Soviet nuclear bomb tests have left a toxic wasteland in Kazakhstan. The nuclear explosions have stopped, but Russia still rents vast swathes of Kazakh territory for missile tests that critics say are devastating for the environment and its inhabitants. Filmmaker: Harutyun Mansuryan. Wasteland first aired on Current Time TV's Crossroads program in March 2019.
When the proposed Chigirinsky Nuclear Power Plant was canceled in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, the Ukrainian town of Orbita was left to molder away.
