Lake Karachay was a small lake in the southern Ural mountains in Russia. Starting in 1951, the Soviet Union used Karachay as a dumping ground for radioactive waste from the Mayak nuclear waste storage and reprocessing facility, located near what was then Chelyabinsk-40 (Ozyorsk). In 1968, following a drought in the region, the wind carried radioactive dust away from the lake, irradiating half a million people. By 1990, Lake Karachay contained enough radioactive waste to emit 600 röntgens of radiation per hour, enough to give anyone just standing beside it for an hour a lethal dose.
Today, the lake is completely infilled, acting as “a near-surface permanent and dry nuclear waste storage facility” and is regarded as the most polluted place on Earth, its radioactivity comparable to that of Chernobyl.
