In late 1945, along the banks of the Techa River in the Soviet Union, a
dozen labor camps sent 70,000 inmates to begin construction of a secret
city. Mere months earlier the United States'
Little Boy and
Fat Manbombs had flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leaving Soviet leaders
salivating over the massive power of the atom. In a rush to close the
gap in weapons technology, the USSR commissioned a sprawling
plutonium-production complex in the southern Ural mountains. The
clandestine military-industrial community was to be operated by
Russia's
Mayak Chemical Combine, and it would come to be known as Chelyabinsk-40.
Damn Interesting » In Soviet Russia, Lake Contaminates You