«Do you glow in the dark?» how one woman fought Kremlin’s nuclear pollution
Текст на русском
On July 2, 2015, Nadezhda Kutepova was making dinner when she heard a news story about spies on TV. On the screen, infamous propagandist anchorwoman Olga Skabeyeva was approaching the entrance of Nadezhda’s building. Skabeyeva then climbed the stairs and pointed to Nadezhda’s apartment: «Espionageagainst our state are being conducted from here». The activist explained it was easy to recognize her door because of the «funny old doorbell hanging on the wire»; one could certainly say «the spy» wasn’t very wealthy. A few days later, she fled Russia with her three children never to return.
Nadezhda lived in Ozersk, a tightly guarded, closed town in the Chelyabinsk region. Closed towns are a Soviet relic — they are built around secretive defence factories and research labs. Entrance is forbidden to outsiders, the checkpoints are guarded by security services and one can only come in and out with special documents. Ozersk is home to the Mayak Production Association, tasked with processing and storing radioactive materials from nuclear power plants, submarines, and icebreakers, while also producing weapons-grade plutonium. Established in the late 1940s for the production of plutonium for the Soviet Union’s atomic bomb, Ozersk remains shrouded in secrecy.
According to official statistics, cancer ranks among the top three leading causes of death in Ozersk.
«Don’t sit in the snow, it’s dirty»
On September 29, 1957, a catastrophic explosion rocked the Mayak Chemical Plant, situated in the town then known as Chelyabinsk-40. The resulting radioactive cloud covered an expanse of 20 thousand square kilometres. Within a month, 23 villages in the district were evacuated, displacing roughly 12, 000 residents whose properties and livestock were burned. The broad Soviet population remained unaware of the incident until 1989, when state archives were unveiled during Perestroika. Today, the Mayak explosion ranks as the third of history’s worst nuclear disaster, following Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Among the emergency workers sent to clean up and restore the irradiated plant was Lev, who would later become Nadezhda’s father. At just 18 years old, he was drafted to serve in Chelyabinsk-40. After his service in the cleanup efforts, he decided to remain in the secret town due to its higher standard of living compared to his Siberian hometown of Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg). Lev studied engineering and secured a job at a nuclear waste recycling plant. He got married, and later his first daughter, Natalia, was born. Nadezhda shared that her older sister, whom she never met, suffered from a brain disease linked to the radiation exposure her father experienced during the cleanup. She passed away at 20, after spending her entire life in mental institutions.
Later, Lev met Larisa, Nadezhda’s mother. They got married in 1971. Lev died of cancer in 1985, when his second daughter was just 13 years old. Nadezhda’s grandmother on the mother’s side, Nadezhda Ivanovna, also passed away from cancer. She was among the pioneering creators of the first Soviet atomic bomb. Nadezhda as described her as «crafting plutonium with her own hands».
In 1990, Nadezhda graduated from nursing school and started her career as an ER nurse. Later, she pursued further education at the Sociology Department of Ural State University. At the same time, she engaged in trading at the local Ozersk market. Nadezhda vividly recalls the time from 1993 to 1999, freezing winters and scorching summers while selling socks at the market to finance her education. «This is an important aspect of my life journey», she emphasizes, «and I’ve never shied away from it. Working at the market allowed me to truly connect with the people of Ozersk».