european bank for reconstruction and development
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A Tiny Town Was the Soviet Union’s Uranium Hub. Now, It’s Racing to Avoid Disaster
Anna Travkina remembers the day the water turned black. She was six years old in 1958, when heavy rainfall and seismic activity pushed up to 14 million cubic feet of radioactive uranium waste into the river that flowed past her home in southern Kyrgyzstan. Travkina had been playing with her friends along the riverbank, but…