Kim Traill:

Gosman Kabirov has lived his life in the midst of a deadly secret. 40 kilometres upriver from his village is the Mayak Chemical Combine, the main production facility for weapons-grade plutonium in the Soviet Union.

Gosman Kabirov:

[foreign language]

Kim Traill:

In 1957, just six months before Gosman was born, a storage tank for highly radioactive waste exploded at Mayak. It ended up in this river, already heavily contaminated with radioactive discharge from the plant in the early '50s.

Gosman Kabirov:

[foreign language]

Kim Traill:

[foreign language]

Gosman Kabirov:

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Kim Traill:

42 years later, Mayak is still in operation, Russia's sole reprocessing plant for nuclear waste.

And Gosman's village, Muslyumovo, is now acknowledged to be the most radioactively contaminated village on earth.

Girl:

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Gosman Kabirov:

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Kim Traill:

Gosman has been testing radiation levels in the area for the past 10 years. He's trying to prove that there is a link between the accident at Mayak and the deaths and diseases which followed.

Gosman Kabirov:

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Kim Traill:

[foreign language]

Gosman Kabirov:

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Kim Traill:

This measurement is over 80 times what is regarded as a safe level of radioactivity.

Kim Traill:

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Gosman Kabirov:

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Kim Traill:

And the compensation the villagers receive for living in Muslyumovo is a mere 33 rubles a month, little over $2.

Rafid M.:

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Gosman Kabirov:

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Kim Traill:

43-year-old Rafid Magludtovich was Gosman's classmate at school. He has already undergone four operations: three on his stomach, one on his spine. But he is lucky to be alive. Many of their other classmates are already did.

Rafid M.:

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Gosman Kabirov:

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Rafid M.:

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Gosman Kabirov:

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Rafid M.:

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Gosman Kabirov:

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Rafid M.:

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Gosman Kabirov:

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Rafid M.:

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Gosman Kabirov:

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Rafid M.:

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Gosman Kabirov:

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Rafid M.:

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Gosman Kabirov:

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Rafid M.:

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Gulfira M.:

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Kim Traill:

Rafid's wife, Gulfira, is 44. Last year she buried seven close relatives.

Gulfira M.:

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Kim Traill:

This is four times the size of a normal human heart.

Gulfira M.:

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Kim Traill:

By the time she reached the age of 30, the radiation had cause all Gulfira's teeth to fall out. She, Rafid, and all the villagers in Muslyumova now have false teeth.

Rafid M.:

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Gulfira M.:

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Rafid M.:

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Kim Traill:

Both Gulfira's parents died from cancer, Both Gulfira's parents died from cancer, but her grandmother is still alive.

Gulfira M.:

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Gosman Kabirov:

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Gulfira M.:

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Gosman Kabirov:

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Kim Traill:

Over 1 million people in the Chelyabinsk region were exposed to huge amounts of radiation following the Mayak explosion. It took the Russian government 30 years to even admit the accident had happened. But in spite of the mounting evidence that the health of the population has been drastically affected, the government keeps details in strict secrecy.

Man:

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Kim Traill:

In 1996, Gosman formed an environmental organisation called Techa, after the river which runs through Muslyumova.

Gosman Kabirov:

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Older Man:

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Kim Traill:

Techa is trying to make the state accountable to the victims of the Mayak accident. They tried, without success, to sue Mayak for compensation.

Gosman Kabirov:

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Kim Traill:

The government has now put Gosman under state surveillance. Every demonstration is videoed by the police.

Policeman:

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Gosman Kabirov:

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Kim Traill:

They were noted in the West, too. Techa's work won Gosman an International Soros Foundation Award. For this, the secret police and military accuse him of espionage.

Gosman Kabirov:

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Kim Traill:

Gosman's wife Milya is also involved in his quest for justice for the victims of Mayak. She has been trying to collect data on diseases and birth defects in the area affected by radioactive fallout. Local hospitals have been very reluctant to give out information. But recently she smuggled a Dictaphone into the clinic at their home village at Muslyumova and secretly recorded official admissions of the scale of the disaster.

Milya Kabirov:

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Gennadi Brukhin:

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Kim Traill:

Gennadi Brukhin, the professor of embryology at the Chelyabinsk Medical Academy, has also carried out his own unofficial research. Over the past few years, he has collected a large number of aborted and miscarried foetuses from the region.

Gennadi Brukhin:

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Kim Traill:

No records have ever been kept of the number of deformities in the community. Miscarriages and abortions weren't registered. Babies with mental and physical disabilities that survived were taken away from their parents to be kept out of sight in horrific state-run orphanages.

Gennadi Brukhin:

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Milya Kabirov:

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Gennadi Brukhin:

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Milya Kabirov:

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Kim Traill:

Gennadi suspects the deformities are linked to radiation, but without a comprehensive study, he can't prove it.

Gennadi Brukhin:

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Milya Kabirov:

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Kim Traill:

Milya has sent the results of her investigation so far to the Ministry of Health, asking for a study of genetic problems caused by radiation. Years later, she is still waiting for an answer.

Rosa Kazantseva is also still waiting for a response from the state. She was a schoolteacher in Muslyumova for 17 years. In 1994, her young son died in his sleep. Her daughter Ksenya was born with cerebral palsy. After years of examinations, it has at last been officially acknowledged that Ksenya's condition was caused by Rosa's prolonged exposure to radiation during her time in Muslyumova.

Rosa Kazantseva:

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Kim Traill:

Rosa and Ksenya moved from Muslyumova three years ago to a nearby village. Consequently, they are now no longer entitled to compensation.

Ksenya K.:

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Rosa Kazantseva:

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Kim Traill:

Today, the land around Mayak is still farmed. Here, people grow vegetables and wheat, raise cattle and pick mushrooms and berries in the forest. Most of the population are ethnic Tatars, Muslims with traditionally large families. But many of the generation who have grown up since the explosion are sterile. Gosman's own family is typical. His mother had 11 children, and was even honoured for her efforts.

Gosman Kabirov:

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Kim Traill:

Gosman and Milya, on the other hand, were unable to have children.

Gosman Kabirov:

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Kim Traill:

Even more distressing for Gosman and the villagers is the belief that they have been used as human guinea pigs, forced to live in a radioactive area so scientists could study the effects of radiation on a captive population.

Milya Kabirov:

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Gosman Kabirov:

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Kim Traill:

Shortly after the accident, a new research institute was opened in Moscow. Scientists from the Institute of Biophysics would arrive regularly in Muslyumova, taking blood and bone marrow samples from the villagers.

Milya Kabirov:

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Gosman Kabirov:

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Kim Traill:

2,000 kilometres northwest of Mayak, on the Kola Peninsula, is the base of the navy's northern fleet. But dozens of its nuclear submarines and ships lie scuttled in the icy waters along the coast, their nuclear reactors still on board, in danger of melting down or leaking. There hasn't yet been a catastrophe to rival that which occurred at Mayak, but with each passing year, the risk grows greater.

Sergei Fillipov is a Russian activist working for the Norwegian environmental monitoring organisation Bellona.

Sergei Fillipov:

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Kim Traill:

Sergei lives in Murmansk, just a few kilometres away from the northern fleet's headquarters. This region has the highest concentration of nuclear reactors in the world.

Sergei Fillipov:

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Kim Traill:

In total, 505 vessels carry nuclear weapons or are powered by nuclear reactors. 300 of those are ships, 205 are submarines. It's the largest nuclear fleet in the world.

The United States is funding the decommissioning of many of Russia's more modern submarines, those which pose a military threat. But it's a long and painstaking process, hampered by a deeply secretive military and a corrupt bureaucracy. Out of 88 submarines earmarked for decommissioning, only two have been completely dismantled. And there is so far no offer of financial aid for the decommissioning of the older subs which pose the greater ecological threat.

Initially, many hoped that with the end of communism, the dangers could be overcome. But for the environment, much has stayed the same and a lot has got worse. The problem is that the nuclear industry is still seen as more of a security issue than an environmental danger. So here, too, people who try to expose the dangers aren't seen as heroes, they're seen as traitors.

Like Gosman, Sergei's every move is shadowed by the postcommunist successor to the KGB secret police, the Federal Security Bureau. Five years ago, the FSB accused Norwegian-funded Bellona of spying for the West.

Sergei Fillipov:

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Kim Traill:

As Sergei and his colleagues were being questioned in Murmansk, a coworker in St Petersburg, Alexander Nikitin, was arrested for treason. A former chief engineer on a nuclear submarine, Nikitin spent 10 months in a maximum-security prison without trial. Bellona eventually secured his release, but for the next four years, Nikitin fought a vicious legal battle against the military prosecutors.

His crime was to write a report for Bellona in which he detailed the dire condition of the northern fleet's nuclear submarines. Not only did Nikitin's report simply compile information that was already publicly available, a Russian law states that information regarding ecological dangers must be revealed. But the government portrayed him as a traitor to the motherland, a seller of state secrets.

Finally, last September, the FSB was forced to drop all charges. Nikitin is now back at work in Bellona's Saint Petersburg office.

Alexander N.:

[foreign language]

Kim Traill:

Since former KGB spy Vladimir Putin came to power, he has further strengthened the hand of the security services. At the time of Nikitin's prosecution, Putin was the head of the Saint Petersburg Federal Security Bureau. In July 1999, he advised his secret police to crack down on international environmental groups. Alexander Nikitin keeps a copy of Putin's decree on his desk to remind him of how little has changed.

Alexander N.:

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Kim Traill:

But the environmentalists are even more concerned about another of Putin's initiatives. Last May, under the guise of reducing government bureaucracy, Putin abolished the only state environmental watchdog, the Committee on Ecology. This effectively gave complete freedom to the government to exploit the country's resources. Activists held a mock funeral for what they saw as the death of any state commitment to protect the environment.

Alexander N.:

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Kim Traill:

And lots of it.

Vladimir Putin:

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Kim Traill:

In December, parliament approved a law allowing the import of spent nuclear fuel for reprocessing in Russia. The contracts with several European and Asian countries are worth $39 billion. And the reprocessing plant which will take an estimated 20,000 tonnes of spent fuel over the next 10 years is none other than Mayak.

Milya Kabirov:

[foreign language]

Gosman Kabirov:

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Milya Kabirov:

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Kim Traill:

In Chelyabinsk, the main city of the South Urals, downwind from Mayak, environmentalists have been alerting residents to the coming dangers. 2 1/2 million Russians signed a petition calling for a national referendum on the proposed import of nuclear waste. According to the constitution, if over 2 million signatures are collected, a referendum must be held. But the government declared only 1.9 million signatures to be valid.

Gosman Kabirov:

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Kim Traill:

And that almost happened just five months ago when an accident in a nearby power station left Mayak without electricity for over 20 minutes.

Gosman Kabirov:

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Kim Traill:

Investigations found the near-miss to be a result of human error.

Mayak has all but destroyed a community whose ancestors have lived here for centuries. Just outside Muslyumova, the villagers have begun to plant a forest. They want it to be a living and growing memorial to the victims of radiation. But should Mayak become the dumping ground for the world's nuclear waste, they fear another accident could destroy the people and land forever.

Gosman Kabirov:

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