Abandoned Russian nuclear polar lighthouses

Posted in PICTURES       8 Jan 2009       14234
This is a very ineteresting material to read, even if it is quite long. It comes from Englishrussia site and really worth reading.
During the Soviet Union era, to guide their cargo ships through the dark polar night across the Russian Northern coastline which is situated inside the Polar Circle, the Soviets decided to build a chain of lighthouses. To make them fully autonomous, because they were situated hundreds and hundreds miles aways from any populated areas, Soviet engineers decided to implement atomic energy to power up those structures. So, special lightweight small atomic reactors were produced in limited series to be delivered to the Polar Circle lands and to be installed on the lighthouses. Those small reactors could work in the independent mode for years and didn’t require any human interference, so it was very handy in the situation like this.
Then, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the unattended automatic lighthouses did it job for some time, but after some time they collapsed too. Mostly as a result of the hunt for the metals like copper and other stuff which were performed by the looters. They didn’t care or maybe even didn’t know the meaning of the “Radioactive Danger” sign and ignored them, breaking in and destroying the equipment. It sounds creepy but they broke into the reactors too causing all the structures to become radioactively polluted.
Abandoned Russian nuclear polar lighthouses
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