Give the country uranium! How the USSR solved the “A-9 problem” by mining German uranium for the Soviet atomic bomb

In 1943, Kurchatov, after analyzing the reserves of uranium in the USSR, came to the conclusion that they were not enough to quickly create an atomic bomb. The head of Laboratory No. 2 wrote to Molotov, who headed the uranium direction before Beria, a memorandum with a proposal to purchase uranium from the United States: “America has explored uranium deposits of several thousand tons and could sell 100 thousand tons of uranium to the USSR. It is doubtful, however, that the American government would allow this operation to be carried out, since its meaning would undoubtedly be correctly assessed. Nevertheless, the People's Commissariat for Foreign Trade made an attempt to buy uranium in America, explaining this by a desire to improve the quality of Soviet steel. But in the end, the USSR Purchasing Commission in Washington announced a refusal, since “the Americans expressed doubt that such a strong chemical element we really need for steels.” By the way, officially the United States adhered to the version that they need uranium for the manufacture of aircraft and shells.

According to legend, the Russian subsoil is rich in any minerals. But nature, having generously endowed Russia with oil and gas, coal and diamonds, was stingy with uranium according to an unknown geological logic.

Until the atomic bomb was invented, uranium was not particularly needed, it was used in scanty doses in the manufacture of paints and glass. In the USSR, only one large uranium deposit was known - near Leninabad, in Tajikistan, but it was depleted by the mid-1950s. Later, uranium was found in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as in Transbaikalia, where the city of Krasnokamensk was built in the late 1960s. This is the largest deposit in Russia, but by world standards it is far from being a leader.

On December 22, 1943, Igor Kurchatov, head of Laboratory No. 2 of the USSR Academy of Sciences, wrote to Mikhail Pervukhin, deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR: “The bottleneck in solving the problem (we are talking about the Atomic Project and the creation of an atomic bomb. - Auth.) Still remains the issue of reserves of uranium raw materials . According to the plans for 1944, it is supposed to receive only 10 tons of uranium salts, which is completely insufficient for a uranium-graphite boiler, the start-up date of which is thus postponed indefinitely. It seems to me that work on raw materials, in particular geological exploration, has not yet received the proper development and material and technical base in our country.”

By the end of 1944, geologists had identified promising areas in the Ferghana Valley and northern Estonia. On December 8, 1944, the State Defense Committee of the USSR adopted Decree No. 7102 ss, which approved measures to ensure the development of mining and processing of uranium ores, which was recognized as the most important state task. The NKVD of the USSR was entrusted with the exploration of uranium deposits, the extraction and processing of uranium ores, the construction and operation of mines and processing plants, the construction and operation of plants for the processing of uranium ores and concentrates, the development of technology for the conversion of uranium ores into chemical compounds and technologies for obtaining metal uranium from them.

In 1944, Narkomtsvetmet mined 1519 tons of ore and received 2 tons of uranium salts. In 1945, it was planned to extract 5 thousand tons of ore and receive 7 tons of uranium, in 1946 - 125 thousand tons of ore and 50 tons of uranium salts. In August 1945, Igor Kurchatov and Isaac Kikoin list promising areas in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Leningrad region, Estonia and Norilsk. In 1945, geologists came to the Karatau uranium deposit in Kazakhstan, which turned out to be one of the richest in the world and is being developed by the largest international concerns in the 21st century.

Two weeks after the US dropped the atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, on August 20, 1945, a Special Committee headed by Beria was created. Prior to this, Vyacheslav Molotov was at the head of the Atomic Project, but there was no tangible progress. Now the uranium problem has risen to its highest possible administrative height and has moved into the most demanding hands imaginable. In 1945, the uranium deposits of Saxony and Czechoslovakia, which were liberated by the Soviet army, came to the attention of the Special Committee. At one of the first meetings, the Special Committee decides: “To recognize the need to organize in Saxony by the NKVD of the USSR geological prospecting work on A-9 (this is how uranium was called in official documents even at the highest level for the purpose of secrecy. - Auth.). Within 5 days, form and equip a geological prospecting party with everything necessary.

Boris Pasha's secret mission

The USSR achieved victory in the bloodiest war, but it was clear that the US possession of an atomic bomb again raises the question of the country's survival. Despite the efforts of geologists, the USSR could not resolve the issue of an acute shortage of uranium with its own reserves within the given time frame.

The Nazi authorities were naturally aware of the uranium deposits in Saxony. Even before the war, geologists were instructed to find raw materials for a secret "superweapon". But after many tests, a disappointing verdict was issued: the uranium in the Ore Mountains decomposed, due to which the concentration of radioactive radon in water sources increased to a healing level. The mines were declared unpromising for industrial purposes and the search stopped. However, if Hitler had believed in the reality of the atomic bomb, perhaps German geologists would have looked for uranium more carefully. When the main initiator of a nuclear project is the post office, as in Germany, only official correspondence will be delivered on time and guaranteed.

At the Yalta Conference in 1945, when discussing the post-war structure of Germany, an agreement was reached on the entry of Saxony and Thuringia into the Soviet zone of occupation. But the Americans, when Soviet army stormed Berlin, urgently advanced 300 kilometers east of the agreed line and occupied Saxony. And without military necessity completely bombed Dresden. Subsequently, this bombing was described by the great American writer and then prisoner of war Kurt Vonnegut in the novel Slaughterhouse Five.

Even the Americans, just a few days before the surrender of Germany, without any connection with military necessity, bombed the city of Oranienburg near Berlin, where the main German plant for the production of uranium for reactors was located. A secret mission (the Alsos group) was sent to Germany to search for and seize any equipment associated with the German uranium project, as well as to send specialists to the United States that could be used in the Manhattan project. As a result, German uranium reactors were taken to the United States, one of which was located in Leipzig in the Soviet zone of occupation. The Alsos group was commanded by the son of an Orthodox metropolitan and former White Guard Boris Pash (Pashkovsky). After the war, when suspicions arose about the communist beliefs of the head of the Manhattan Project, Robert Oppenheimer, Boris Pash personally interrogated the scientist. Colonel Boris Pash is immortalized in the US Military Intelligence Hall of Fame.

Perhaps the only failure of the Alsos group was the erroneous assessment of the uranium deposits in Germany. After three months of research, American geologists gave a conclusion about the futility of the Ore Mountains region. At that time, America at a ridiculous price bought military-strategic raw materials in the Belgian Congo - zinc, tin, cobalt, copper, uranium. The deposits in Germany seemed ridiculous to the Americans, since there was no uranium shortage in the United States. In addition, America, among other valuable trophies, got the German uranium reserves. And all the same, the Americans withdrew from the Ore Mountains only after Zhukov's warning about a possible blockade of West Berlin.

The USSR was sitting on a starvation uranium ration. According to some recollections, Stalin, who always kept Olympian calm, was frightened only twice in his life. The first time was in the summer of 1941, when the Germans invaded the USSR. And the second time - during the years of nuclear backwardness, when America had a bomb, but the USSR did not. The Pentagon, feeling monopoly power, hung over former ally more and more menacing. The USSR, according to the successive plans of Pincher, Sisal and Dropshot, was targeted at first 50, then 200, then 300 American atomic bombs, and we had nothing but tanks. The latest Dropshot plan called for nuclear strikes against 200 cities in the USSR. In the summer of 1949, on the eve of the Soviet atomic bomb test, the US nuclear arsenal consisted of 300 bombs. After a successful test at Semipalatinsk, it was decided to increase the US nuclear arsenal to 1,000 bombs in 1953. Beria, who was personally responsible for the atomic bomb, was all on his nerves. Uranium was as necessary as air.

A hybrid of a scientist and a Chekist

In 1945, a group of Soviet geologists traveled around Germany, as well as Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Hungary under the command of Professor and Colonel Semyon Aleksandrov, who, since the 1920s, had been searching for radioactive ores on Far East, worked at a uranium mine in Central Asia. In 1940, Professor Alexandrov was deputy head of the Mining and Metallurgical Industry Directorate of the Main Directorate of Camps (GULAG) of the NKVD, and in July 1941 he became deputy head and chief engineer of the Gulag, that is, the head of an entire empire, which included the mining and metallurgical enterprises of the NKVD and hundreds of thousands of people. A hybrid of a scientist and a Chekist is an unimaginable alloy, but in Stalin era, which is confirmed by a whole system of "sharashkas" - in the order of things. A philosopher might notice that time gave birth not only to new elements, but also to new combinations of professions.

Uranium, which local geologists did not see in Thuringia and Saxony, did not hide from the insightful Professor Aleksandrov. His verdict was firm: there was enough uranium in the Ore Mountains to start industrial development.

In 1947, on the basis of the decree of the commander-in-chief of the Soviet military administration in Germany, Marshal Sokolovsky, on the transfer of the Saxon mining department to the ownership of the USSR, an order was issued on the basis of reparations to organize the Soviet state joint-stock company Wismuth. By the way, why was the company called "Vismuth"? Bismuth is the last non-radioactive element in Mendeleev's Periodic Table. According to the logic adopted in the Soviet defense industry, the enterprise had to be classified so that even their own people would not guess. So they took an absolutely non-radioactive name. As often happens, for the enemy it was an open secret. The head of the Manhattan project, General Groves, having learned about the beginning of work in the Ore Mountains, said: "The Russians want to get at least a tuft of wool from a black sheep." True, then the Americans were very upset. The sheep turned out not to be lousy at all. If you look for comparisons with sheep, then it was the Golden Fleece.

By the way, over time it turned out that bismuth is the most valuable material in nuclear power, nuclear medicine, radioisotope industry, as well as in the production of nuclear radiation detectors. Thus, if the properties of bismuth were known in the middle of the twentieth century, then "Bismuth" would be called differently.

In 1949, after a successful test of the Soviet atomic bomb, Professor Semyon Aleksandrov, among the first awarded, received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. In the same first batch, the "hero" was received by Major General Mikhail Maltsev, the first director of "Vismuth". Six Wismuth employees also became Heroes of Socialist Labor, and seven were laureates of the Stalin Prize. The generosity of the awards speaks to the significance of "Bismuth" for the creation of the Soviet atomic bomb.

It is curious that Semyon Aleksandrov and Mikhail Maltsev were countrymen - both were born in the Donbass. General Maltsev was also connected with the NKVD all his life, worked in Volgostroy, was the head of the Vorkuto-Pechora department of the NKVD forced labor camps. It does not at all follow from this that Mikhail Maltsev was fierce and saw silent and inanimate slaves in the labor force. People lived according to the laws of their time, and it would be arrogant superficiality to judge their lives based on the values ​​of another era.

Pioneers of market relations

Of course, the methods of management at Bismuth did not differ in liberalism. In addition, in Germany, contrary to the unctuous propaganda reports, the Soviet occupation and the new regime were far from enthusiastic. The overwhelming majority of the German population perceived the defeat as a national catastrophe. Guilt for the crimes of the Third Reich arose much later.

General Maltsev was a servant of the state and a product of the times. The number of German prisoners of war on the Wismuth in 1948 is estimated at 30 thousand people. More precisely, former prisoners of war. If a person agreed to work in his specialty at Bismuth, he was immediately released and sent to Germany. But there were also many civilian German specialists. At first, General Maltsev treated the German personnel, and even after the war, as they would with the usual contingent in Vorkuta. IN archival materials historians have stumbled upon facts of repression that German workers were subjected to. 72 Wismuth employees were accused of espionage and taken to the USSR. Workers Gerhard König and Hans-Jurgen Erdman arrested in 1951, accused of blowing up the main transformer at a mine in Johangeorgenstadt. On June 26, 1952, the workers were executed in a Moscow prison.

To protect the Wismuth, which was located in 6 cities, a special department of the MGB was created in the GDR with direct subordination to the minister. “Given the mood in the GDR, it is possible that there were saboteurs among the miners,” writes Professor technical university in Chemnitz (former Karl-Marx-Stadt, where the headquarters of "Bismuth" was located) Rudolf Boch. “But more often, workers were arrested and taken to the USSR for petty crimes and offenses.”

Surprisingly, General Maltsev opposed in every possible way the fact that prisoners of war were involved in the work at the Wismuth, following the example of nuclear facilities in the USSR, because he believed that the special contingent did not provide high labor productivity and this would interfere with the performance of the strike tasks assigned to the enterprise and them personally. Minister of the Interior Kruglov suggested bringing in prisoners of war to speed up the work, but General Maltsev objected, and this suggests that, contrary to later legends, the system did not exclude discussion.

The extraction tasks were set by Beria, and not following Beria's order was more than risky. By the way, General Maltsev did not report to Marshal Sokolovsky and not to the Soviet military administration, but to the head of the First Main Directorate of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Vannikov, but directly in Germany to Colonel General Serov, authorized by the NKVD for the Group of Soviet Occupation Forces in Germany, who in 1954 became the first chairman of the KGB THE USSR. His career was cut short in 1963 due to the betrayal of the spy Penkovsky. Serov was stripped of the title of Hero Soviet Union, expelled from the party, demoted to major general ...

Almost from the first day, Wismuth was a joint-stock company. Although he was dependent on the political realities of the totalitarian era, but in the operational economic management of Wismuth he lived according to the laws of a joint-stock company. For this reason, Wismuth can be considered a pioneer of market relations in Russia, although they triumphed much later.

Getting ahead of your time and looking into the future is worth a lot and speaks of the exceptional importance of the company on a complex scale of historical perspectives. The economic efficiency of Bismuth is evidenced by the fact that, dispelling the myth of the inefficiency of the socialist economy, in the 1950s it became the largest enterprise in Europe for the extraction of uranium, and in the 1960s - the third in the world.

Of course, the Soviet administration showed flexibility, acting not only with a stick, but also with a carrot. Historian Rainer Karlsch writes: "Compared to other enterprises of the GDR, Wismuth received higher wages, additional holidays, and hospitals." According to memoirs, already in 1947, working conditions at the Wismuth became tolerable, there could be no question of any comparison with the Soviet Gulag, where the regime after the victory in the war did not soften at all. In a secret correspondence, General Maltsev reported to Marshal Sokolovsky about the danger of radioactive exposure at work. But in a mine, even a coal mine, it is generally harmful to work, there is also exposure there, and the level of medicine did not allow for serious radiological examinations. In the initial period of the atomic race, humanity receded into the background. Even their own engineers at the Ural "Mayak" were not spared, radiation sickness in the early 1950s was like the flu. Today it is hard to believe, but then women with radiation sickness gave birth to children - and these children were absolutely healthy! Later, on the basis of the experience of Soviet closed cities, a health care system of an exemplary level was created at Wismuth, which is confirmed by many objective indicators of the health of the population. To talk about the German Chernobyl, as the “greens” did after the fall of socialism, the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of the two Germanys, is to engage in rude agitation and sin against the truth.

1500 km underground

In 1953, the USSR announced the end of reparations, which, it is possible, was due to the workers' uprisings in the GDR and the need for economic support from the first secretary of the SED Central Committee, Walter Ulbricht. By this time, 9,500 tons of uranium had been mined for the Soviet Atomic Project at Wismuth. In January 1954, the Soviet joint-stock company Wismuth was transformed into a Soviet-German joint-stock company, which until 1990 remained the largest producer of uranium in Europe and the third largest producer of uranium in the world. The scale of "Bismuth" is now difficult to imagine. It was a giant mining and processing plant, which employed 70 thousand people, with related enterprises - 135 thousand. Of these, about 3.5 thousand specialists were from the USSR.

In terms of wages and social benefits, it was the most privileged enterprise in the GDR. Dispensaries and sanatoriums of Wismuth were located in the most beautiful places. The famous figure skater Gabi Seifert, with whom all Soviet men were in love, trained at the Wismuth stadium. The Wismuth football team was the champion of the GDR three times. Defender Manfred Kaiser played for Wismuth, who for 10 years was the pillar of the defense of the GDR national team. In the Champions Cup, Wismuth fought with the famous Ajax and the Swedish Gothenburg, and in the UEFA Cup once met with Dnipro from the USSR. A symbolic meeting, although, of course, the commentary on the match did not say that the Dnipropetrovsk region is one of the uranium regions of the USSR. Dnipro took the upper hand, but not for the reason that uranium is stronger in Ukraine, it just played better.

Like the cities of the nuclear empire in the USSR, the German Wismuth was surrounded by several security perimeters with a strict access system, but in compensation was endowed with high-quality supplies and an autonomous telephone network of a special level. Many German engineers on the Wismuth were educated in Soviet universities. The highest guests from the USSR came to the "Vismuth" - cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova, Nobel laureate writer Mikhail Sholokhov. The leaders of the GDR - Walter Ulbricht, Erich Honecker, Willy Shtof often visited here.

Over time, uranium, which was mined in East Germany, began to be used not only for military purposes, but also for the production of fuel for peaceful nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants according to Soviet designs were built in all countries from where the USSR exported mined uranium - in the GDR, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia. Nuclear power plants were built, as they said then, on mutually beneficial terms, which, translated into the dry language of economics, meant that the USSR, through the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), provided credit to partners on favorable terms. For this purpose, the Interatomenergo association was created under the CMEA. In a sense, it can be said that the USSR returned debts for the use of the mineral resources of fraternal countries during the years of the nuclear race.

In 1966, the first nuclear power plant "Reinsberg" in Eastern Europe was built in the GDR. In 1974, 5 more reactors were launched at the Greifswald (Nord) NPP. In addition, the construction of the Shtendal nuclear power plant with 2 powerful reactors of 1000 MW each was started. None of the German reactors repeated the Chernobyl design, they all belonged to the safe VVER family. The share of nuclear energy in the total energy balance of the GDR was about 30%, which corresponded to the level of high-tech countries and exceeded that of the USSR.

In 1961, Semyon Voloshchuk was appointed General Director of Wismuth, with whom the main achievements of the uranium enterprise are associated. Since ancient times, the law of the universe has been known, according to which a chair sways under any boss, and not at all for seismic reasons. According to the status of the joint venture of the general director, it was supposed to be changed every 5 years. But this is an unprecedented incident - Voloshchuk turned out to be so in his place that every time the deadline approached, it rushed from all sides: leave the director to us! As a result, Hero of Socialist Labor Semyon Voloshchuk, as General Director, led Bismuth for 25 years. That is, until Chernobyl itself, when almost all the directors of the USSR nuclear empire lost their posts in a hurricane, despite their merits and despite their shortcomings. Hero of Socialist Labor Semyon Voloshchuk was awarded the highest awards East Germany and Czechoslovakia, where in the 1950s he headed a uranium mining enterprise for 8 years.

In total, 230 thousand tons of uranium were mined at Wismuth. At the first stage of the Atomic Project, when it was necessary to break the US monopoly on the atomic bomb, Wismuth provided more than 50% of the uranium supply. In 1991, when the political winds changed, the USSR, despite the proposals of its German partners, refused to continue production. Deposits of their own uranium have accumulated - where is the new ore to be mined? 230 thousand tons - is it a lot or a little? At the richest in Russia, the Priargunskoye deposit in Transbaikalia produces less than 3 thousand tons of uranium per year. An easy arithmetic exercise - and it is clear that it would be black ingratitude not to mention "Bismuth" with a kind word.

Today, in united Germany, nothing remains of the former Wismuth. Germany has decided to abandon nuclear energy, gradually closing nuclear power plants. First of all, nuclear power plants in East Germany were boarded up, although one of the stations was completely new. Since 1990, land reclamation has begun at the site of uranium quarries, for which 7 billion euros have been allocated from the federal budget. The danger was represented by huge settling ponds, some of which could accommodate up to 300 football fields. The total length of mine workings, reaching a depth of 2 kilometers, exceeded 1,500 kilometers. During the reorganization, it was necessary to fill with rocks 55 mine shafts, 6 adits, 85 wells. Since mining was often done by in situ leaching, where sulfuric acid is pumped through the wells, which flushes out the uranium and pushes it to the surface, the environmental problems have grown in complexity. Sulphuric acid sooner or later it will come out of the depths into the light of day, and this will be more terrible than a meeting with the mountain spirit Rübetzal from German folk tales.

The reclamation of large uranium mines was carried out for the first time in the world and provided invaluable experience. All environmental problems were solved by the diligent implementation of Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Blooming Landscapes program for East Germany. The idyllic Thuringian town of Ronneburg, where the largest uranium ore mining was carried out until the end of the 1980s, became the center of the annual national horticultural exhibition Bundesgartenschau-2007. The reclamation is carried out by a company called Wismuth. This is the last shadow, as in "Hamlet" ...

History does not know the subjunctive mood and develops according to capricious logic, crossing out our labors and expectations. It is stupid to be offended by history, but it is worth noting that the unemployment rate in the lands where Bismuth flourished reaches 20%.

Butugychag - a forced labor camp, was part of Tenlag, a division of the Gulag.

The camp existed in 1937-1956 on the territory of the modern Magadan region. The camp is known for its deadly uranium and tin mines. Since here they mined tin and uranium by hand, without protective equipment. It was one of the few camps where, after the Great Patriotic War prisoners mined uranium. The structure of Butugychag included several separate camp points (OLP): “p / box No. 14”, “Dieselnaya”, “Central”, “Kotsugan”, “Sopka”, “Bacchanka”.

In local folklore, the area is known as Death Valley. This name was given to the area by a nomadic deer herding tribe in the area. Moving along the Detrin River, they came across a huge field filled with human skulls and bones. Shortly thereafter, their deer fell ill with a mysterious illness, the first symptom of which was loss of fur on their legs, followed by a refusal to walk. Mechanically, this name passed to the Beria camp of the 14th department of the Gulag.

At 222 km of the Tenkinskaya highway in Kolyma there is a bright sign warning of danger. Yes, there is radiation. 70 years ago, thousands of prisoners worked as an anthill. I will tell you about this in detail. In those places, the streams "Chert", "Shaitan", "Kotsugan" (devil-Yakut.) originate. Not without reason was given such a name to these places.

How serious everything can be seen on this map-scheme created by the Regional Sanitary and Epidemiological Station.

Power plant building.

The stream running along the road gradually turns into a deep river.

Tailing dump of washed rock.

The factory building, like all the surviving buildings of the camps, is made of natural stone.

The vast area was surrounded by a barbed wire fence.

All slopes of nearby hills are pitted with exploratory trenches.

Where the road to the Upper Butugychag passed, a stream now flows, turning into a full-flowing river in the rainy months.

The ruins of an enrichment factory.

"OLP No. I" meant: "Separate camp point No. I". OLP No. 1 Central was not just a big camp. It was a huge camp, with a population of 25-30 thousand prisoners, the largest in Butugychag "
-Zhigulin A.V. "Black Stones"

“There was no longer any doubt - the stage was assembled to Kolyma.
Even in the camps, Kolyma was a symbol of something especially formidable and disastrous. They looked at those who had been there as if they had miraculously escaped from the underworld itself. There were so few of them that they were nicknamed Kolyma, even without adding a name. And everyone knew who it was."

We were once again convinced of the ingenuity of the Gulag when we were taken from the transfer by cars. Ordinary open three-tons with high sides obediently lined up along the track. In front of the cabin, a bench for the convoy is fenced off. But how will they take us - in bulk? They ordered us to get into the cars and line up in fives facing the cab. There are ten fives in each car. Packed tightly. We counted the first three fives and commanded:
- Around!
So let's stand and go? .. Another team:
- Sit down!
It didn't work on the first try.
- Get up! Together, together we must sit down! Well, sit down!
They sat down, one might say, on each other's knees, and those who were directly face to face formed a reliable lock between their legs with their knees, like a log house. We have all become living logs. Whoever wants to get up - you won’t jump up, you won’t even stretch your legs. Soon we felt how our legs began to numb ...
Gorchakov G. N. L-I -105: Memoirs

Butugychag. Central campsite. That's where we got to.
We were not immediately imbued with the gloom of those places - small valleys surrounded by hills, hills, hills without end ...
Helping each other to get out of the cars, gradually feeling that our legs were still alive, we were glad for such a will. For that modern reader who wants to sit in an easy chair and read about how the urks gouged out our eyes with pikes, drove nails into our ears, or how the guards hunted us, I would advise you to get up, stretch your arms up and hold them like that for at least minutes. would be ten, without lowering. After that, I can continue my story for him.

The mine we came across belonged to the Tenka Mining Administration. The whole of Kolyma was divided into five regional GPUs. Tenka was away from the main road. We reach the village of Palatka on the seventy-first kilometer of the highway and turn left. One hundred and eighty-first kilometers from Magadan, the district center is the village of Ust-Omchug, and fifty kilometers further north from it - this is where the Butugychag branch of the Berlag will be.
Gorchakov G. N. L-I -105: Memoirs

A column of arrivals was lined up in the zone, and the contractor Bobrovitsky, from convicts, delivered a welcoming speech. He was blond, with thin, evil features, dressed in an unusual camp padded jacket: stitching was done everywhere, a collar and patch pockets were sewn on, all edges were edged with leather - this gave the padded jacket a smart look. Later I was surprised that all of Moscow wore such jackets ... A number is sewn on the back of the jacket. All convicts here wore numbers.
Local names “Butugychag”, “Kotsugan”, which in translation sound approximately like “Devil’s Valley”, “Valley of Death”; the direct names of the sites: Bes, Shaitan - they themselves say what kind of places these are ...
Gorchakov G. N. L-I -105: Memoirs

BUR… A high-security barrack. A large prison built of wild stone in the camp.
I am describing the prison (it was also called the "cunning house") at the main camp of Butugychag - Central. There were many cells in the BUR - both large and small (single) - with both cement and wooden floors. There were lattice partitions in the corridor, and the doors of the cells were either lattice or solid steel.
The BUR stood in the very corner of a large zone, under a tower with searchlights and a machine gun. The BUR population was diverse. Basically - refusers from work, as well as violators of the camp regime. Violations were also different - from possession of homemade playing cards to murder.

“When the frost did not exceed 40 degrees, we were sent to brigade No. 401. The BUR brigade had such a number. These were people who refused to work in the mine. If you don't want to work underground in the heat - please work outdoors. We - 15-20 people were taken out of the zone to the place of work at the end of the divorce. The place of work was visible from afar - the slope of the hill opposite the village. All Butugychagek hills, except for some rocks, were essentially huge mountains, as if heaped from granite stones of various shapes and sizes. There were two posts of soldiers: one down the slope, the other at the top, a hundred meters away.

The essence of the work was as follows: in carrying large stones. Upwards. The work was very hard - with large stones in their hands, in worn cotton mittens, they had to go up along the same icy stones. Hands and feet froze, cheeks were burned by a frosty wind. During the day, brigade No. 401 dragged up a large pile, a pyramid of stones. The soldiers at both posts naturally warmed themselves by the resinous fires. The next day, the work was reversed. The top heap-pyramid was moved down. And it doesn't get any easier. So in the twentieth century, the legend of Sisyphean labor came to life, really embodied.
For two months of such work, we severely frostbite, weakened and ... asked to go to the mine.
-Zhigulin A.V. "Uranium rod"

It is known that one of the gratings was confiscated to the local museum of local lore.

Apparently the warmest place in BUR, with a double roof and a large stove. Bunks in the guardroom of the resting shift.

From the moment of its organization in 1937, the Butugychag mine was part of the YuGPU - the Southern Mining Administration and at first was a tin mine.
in February 1948, at the Butugychag mine, a camp department No. 4 of a special camp No. 5 - Berlag "Coast Camp" was organized. At the same time, uranium ore began to be mined here. In this regard, Combine No. 1 was organized on the basis of the uranium deposit.

A hydrometallurgical plant with a capacity of 100 tons of uranium ore per day began to be built at Butugychag. As of January 1, 1952, the number of employees in the First Directorate of Dalstroy increased to 14,790 people. It was maximum amount employed in construction and mining operations in this department. Then a decline also began in the extraction of uranium ore, and by the beginning of 1953 there were only 6130 people in it. In 1954, the supply of workers for the main enterprises of the First Directorate of Dalstroy fell even more and amounted to only 840 people at Butugychag. (Kozlov A. G. Dalstroy and the Sevvostlag of the NKVD of the USSR ... - Part 1 ... - S. 206.)

Here are the bars. They can be found near the guard barracks in any camp in Kolyma.

This mountain of shoes is Butugychag's calling card. It may have come from the destroyed warehouse building. There are similar heaps at the site of other camps.

In one of the cells, this tablet was scrawled on the wall, perhaps it served as a calendar for someone.

The Sopka camp was undoubtedly the most terrible in terms of meteorological conditions. Besides, there was no water. And water was delivered there, like many cargoes, by Bremsberg and narrow gauge railway, and in winter it was extracted from the snow. But there was almost no snow there, it was blown away by the wind. The steps to the "Sopka" followed the pedestrian road along the ravine and - higher - along the human path. It was a very hard climb. Cassiterite from the Gornyak mine was transported in trolleys along a narrow gauge railway, then reloaded onto the bremsberg platforms. Stages from "Sopka" were extremely rare.

OLP Central today…

Photo 1950

Let's give the country coal, even small, but up to x ... I! And the "coal" was different - both pure granite (waste rock), and the most diverse ore. Volodya and I rolled granite in the 23rd crosscut on the 6th horizon. The crosscut was beaten perpendicular to the supposed ninth vein. Once, when I was degassing the face after the explosion, I saw, besides granite stones, something else - silvery heavy stones of a crystalline type. Clearly metal! He ran to the telephone by the cage and gleefully called the office. The mountain master came quickly. Sadly, he held silver stones in his hands, cursed in black and said:
- It's not metal!
- And what is it, citizen chief?
- This shit - silver! Collect the samples in a bag and take them to the office. Remember: 23rd crosscut, picket 6th.
If silver is shit, then what did we mine? Probably something very important, strategic.
A.V. Zhigulin.

On the "Sopka" there is nothing but stone - no vegetation, no cedar elfin, which sometimes climbs high, not even lichen - only loaches. You will not find an earthen path anywhere. You can't walk ten steps without lifting or sloping. There is no flat place in the whole camp from a patch. Yes, to walk, in fact, when ... From work - for dinner, and then - stone bags are still closed for constipation. Only the wind of a dog walks through the camp. It blows incessantly, the whole difference is that it turns the other side, - after all, the height is not protected by anything ...

Outside the walls of the barracks are stone. The stone is dark, heavy, gloomy. Inside - also the same, no plaster, no whitewashing. In the section along the walls there are double bunks, in the middle there is an iron stove. There were almost no firewood. Well, they will get the old rubber, they feed the stove until the morning, but the stench ... so you can get used to it. And then you wake up in the morning - the water in the mug dragged on in a blue circle - it froze. Whoever is lucky enough to get into the section above the medical unit - it's warm there, the pipe goes through. That's just the stuffiness pestering, and bedbugs from all over the area, apparently, are gathering. There were no windows - only light bulbs were on around the clock. In the industrial regions of Kolyma, high-voltage power is everywhere, so there was enough electricity - not in a strong glow - but enough.

A cone-shaped, but round, not sharp and not rocky hill rose high above the Central. On its steep (45-50 degrees) slope, a bremsberg was built, a railroad along which two wheeled platforms moved up and down. They were pulled by cables, rotated by a strong winch, installed and strengthened on a platform specially carved in granite.

This platform was about three-quarters of the distance from the foot to the top. Bremsberg was built in the mid-30s. Undoubtedly, even now it can serve as a guide for the traveler, even if the rails are removed, because the sole, on which the sleepers of the bremsberg were fixed, was a shallow, but still noticeable recess on the slope of the hill. Let's call this hill for simplicity the Bremsberg Hill, although on the geological plans it probably has a different name or number.

In order to see the entire bremsberg and the top of the hill from the Central one, one had to lift one's head high. It was more convenient to observe with Dieselnaya (“big things are seen from a distance”). From the upper platform of the Bremsberg, a narrow-gauge road to the Sopka camp and its Gornyak enterprise went to the right as a horizontal thread along the slope of the hill, a long one adjacent to the Bremsberg Hill. The Yakut name of the place where the camp and the Gornyak mine was located is Shaitan. It was the most "ancient" and the highest above sea level mining enterprise of Butugychag.

The guards quickly gained weight, grew fat. The sedentary lifestyle in the open air and the abundance of Lend-Lease stew did their job.

"Armchair" near the guard house.

The barrack was divided into two halves, each with four residential sections - like cells; in the middle, where steps led from the street, something like a vestibule, in which there was a glazed booth for the guard on duty and a room for two huge wooden slop barrels lowered into the platform.

The Sopka camp, one might say, did not have a zone - everything was so crowded ... Dash into the dining room, dart into the medical unit - there was nowhere to roam. There were only aisles.

There is no water in the camp - no tap water, no well. There is never even dirt: if it rains or snow melts, everything instantly goes downhill. The main source of water is melting snow. A team of water-carriers is carried to the kitchen. The brigade is not numerous, because they do not give acceptances for it, and it trains only for the very, very needs. Due to weakness, I worked in this brigade for some time.

Two by two, with barrels on our shoulders, six or eight buckets, we walked somewhere for a long time, descended, ascended, dragged over huge boulders, crawled through low tunnels, glided along narrow, icy paths of a gorge ... We walked around the perimeter of a suddenly opened terrible abyss - take a step, and the end of the torment ... (But there was never even a thought about it. I have never heard of a bypass case of suicide). Finally, they reached the source, making its way under the arch of the cave.

Barrels for water, too, probably, were made by someone from the breed of that gypsy who was friends with a bear and strove to entangle and uproot the entire forest or dig the entire well, and not drag the skin of water. Well, how can I be friends with a bear! I would rather ask for the company of a boy with a finger ...
It would have been possible not to top up, but the partner was angry:
- They scold! he is afraid.
And most importantly, it worries him - the cook will not give supplements for underfilling.
Under the bending weight, the shoulder burns. One desire - to throw off the damned one ... Legs tremble, weave, glasses fog up, freeze, and you walk as if blindly ...
No, you don’t even need an extra gruel ... After two weeks, I ran away from there.

Hunger makes a person work, but here, on the contrary, work makes him hungry. You spend the evening on mittens until late, lie down on your mournful bunk beds, wrap your head in a pea jacket to warm yourself with your steam, lower your wadded trousers on yourself a little so that it is warmer for your feet, and you fall into a short oblivion ...

Glass jar windows.

The buckets had to be taken to a far corner and poured out from the precipitous slope. You had to go stumbling over uneven, and even for a second, but your shoulder turned out to be higher than the others - all the enormous weight of the burden pressed on you alone ...
One can imagine how the bearers clung to each other, what curses were showered on them by those who came across along the way ...

The organizers of these buckets, apparently, were guided by the correctional code, which said: "... should not be aimed at causing physical suffering and humiliation of human dignity."
All summer the teams, in addition to work, carried firewood. Night shifts - after, and day shifts before work went downstairs, where the delivered logs lay; each one chose a small log and on his own hump he passed along the entire steepness directly to the camp. If the balans seemed liquidish, then you were returned for others - firewood served as a pass to the camp.

Remains of a canteen and a bakery.

A nursery-swing in the free part.

The free part was close to the zone.

Knife switch on the wall of the BUR made from improvised materials.

Firewood served as a pass to the camp. Or another picture: a tired brigade returns to the zone, when suddenly the gray-haired, with a stubble-covered face, the camp head Kifarenko, from convicts, blocks the road, which means that food for the camp was delivered on Bremsberg: heavy bags, boxes, barrels.
Although Kifarenko looks about sixty years old, he is very strong oak, and everyone knows that his hand is heavy. He always has such a gloomy, ferocious expression that not a single brigadier will say against the word. Everyone is afraid of Kifarenko.
The brigade obediently turns and walks towards the Bremsberg.

I was taken to the penal brigade (BUR - enhanced regime brigade) after work. The camera was at the bottom of a two-story building, crashing into a rock. The first bolt hung on the outer door of the building, followed by a small corridor and a second bolted iron door. Fortress! Double bunks, iron stove, slop bucket. At that time it was the only brigade where the majority were Russians, mostly recidivist criminals. The brigadier Kostya Bychkov, a large man in his thirties, was also a criminal. There were few people in the brigade, seven people.

I began to wash. He pulled out a miraculously preserved embroidered towel sent from home.
- Beautiful, - said Bychkov.
- Like? Take it, I said.
They'll take it anyway. Bychkov showed me a place on the top bunk, not far from him. That's where the blat ended. Penalty (as I will call for brevity) was going through a difficult time. They went to and from work under escort, sometimes in handcuffs (in other brigades, a general cordon was gradually introduced). They were not allowed into the dining room - the bandits took away food from the convicts, broke into the bread slicer. The attendants brought food to our cell. And on one soldering you will not last long. Some of the criminals decided: if five people remain in the penalty area, it will be disbanded. A hunt for people began: a stone fell on the head of one, another was hit with a crowbar at the exit from the adit in the dark ...

Bychkov and those with him, who are smarter, understood: this is not an option. The penalty box will remain if even two people remain in it. It's for fear. And in hell itself there must be a cauldron in which the resin is blacker and hotter. So there is only one way out: you have to work. And turn your inconvenience into an advantage. Are they not allowed into the cafeteria? To intimidate the cooks so that more gruel and porridge are brought into the cell. There is a stove - which means that you can get firewood, branches, and it will always be warm in the cell. And one more thing - rest and sleep. Overhead we have the clatter of feet - they are running to the dining room for evening verification, and we have been sleeping and dreaming for a long time.
And so it happened. The general scarecrow was that the regime brigade helped many, including me, to survive. Although she killed, as in the days of the hunger strike, which I will tell about later.

The same BUR.

The lid of an iron barrel served as a material for making a mold for baking bread.

At that time, there were no mining developments in Nizhny Butugychag (there were only diesel, a garage, auxiliary enterprises), they were only deployed in the Middle (adit, search for some kind of "secret elements"). The main mining production was concentrated on the Upper Butugychag - on the Miner. There, in adits and cuts, cassetterite was mined - "tin stone" - tin ore.
The development of the veins was carried out in open cuts and adits. Drilling - explosion - rock removal and face cleaning - and a new cycle. We, the mining brigades, loaded the rock into trolleys and sent it to the Carmen (women's) and Shaitan processing plants. There the rock was crushed and washed.

Gornyak killed with its climate. Imagine Ukrainians, accustomed to a rather warm climate, and throw them into frosts reaching up to 60 degrees, into merciless northerly winds blowing the last remnants of warmth out of wadded clothes. In addition, it was impossible to dry it in the first year - they would steal it! Try, then find footcloths or mittens. And no one will look for them. And in wet chunyah or footcloths - true frostbite, you will rot alive. The cold was also plaguing in the cells. Ivan Golubev, a simple Russian soul, once, already in the years when the regime softened in hard labor, admitted: “For the first time, I warmed up today. And then, believe me, he could not warm himself with a sledgehammer or gruel, he was trembling all over.

It's true, the prospectors who passed here were gloomy guys - they called the enrichment plant "Shaitan", the rivers - Bes and Kotsugan, which also means "hell" in Yakut. Even the key at the foot of the hill was named far from aesthetically pleasing - Snotty.

But along the valley on this side of the hills, apparently, romantics passed. The rivulet, on which the enrichment factory became, was called Carmen, the camp women's point - "Bacchante" (not very literate convicts called it more understandable for themselves - Lokhanka), and the valley itself - the Jose Valley.

So we talked. Just then, one nimble little man was spinning. He asked: “Where is the sea? And the mainland - Yakutia? I showed and still thought: “What an inquisitive!” I remembered this "curious" much later in the penal brigade, when I thought - why did I get here? It turned out - "prone to shoots." And he laid it down - that smart little man, a lover of geography.

That winter, when the three of us arrived at Butugychag, we died every day on Sopka. The dead were tied with wire or rope by the legs and dragged along the road. The cemetery was located behind the camp "Middle Butugychag", not far from the ammonal warehouse. Convenient - no need to carry explosives far. Dry skeletons, covered with leather, were buried in the "ammonal" naked, in a common pit made by an explosion. In underwear and in boxes with a peg, they began to bury much later.

Ghibli not only "goal". I remember Oleg, who, according to him, was at one time a boxing champion among young men in Kyiv. You can imagine how complicated he was, if he looked good even now. Broken morally, feeling his strength fading, Oleg set out to get down to the hospital at any cost. Lie down, rest. Others ate soap for that, gnawed snow and ice to make their throats swollen, and made other bridges.

Oleg worked as a hauler in a nearby adit. He lay down on the rails near the trolley, saying that he had no strength to move. They tried to lift him with kicks and butts - it was useless. Then, having beaten, they carried him out and threw him into an ice puddle at the mouth of the adit. Streams of melting snow and water dripped and poured from the eaves. Oleg continued to lie stubbornly - half an hour, an hour. He achieved his goal - the temperature rose at night, and he was taken to the hospital. There he died of pneumonia. “Overdone, outplayed,” his friend said with a sigh.

The “miner” killed with the hardest work, exhausting the soul and body, with a trolley and a shovel, a pick and a sledgehammer. The night was not enough to rest the bones and muscles. It seems that he just fell asleep - and blows on the rail and shouts of “Rise!” are heard. He killed with eternal malnutrition, when it seems that you start to eat yourself, your offal, emaciated muscles.

"Gornyak" killed with scurvy and diseases, rarefied air. It was said that only a few tens of meters of height were not enough for civilian employees to be paid additional altitude in addition to the northern allowances. Finally, the "Gornyak" killed by beatings - with a rifle butt, a warder's stick, a foreman's shovel and pick (another foreman no longer beat himself, having henchmen - "backbiters" or "dogs").

Rumor has it that a stage to Gornyak is being prepared. Commission tomorrow. They talked about Gornyak with fear and horror. Not only those who have already visited it, but also those who have yet to drink this bitter cup. The unknown is always scarier. In the evening I saw a strange picture. Three fellow countrymen, lowering their underpants, took turns examining each other's asses (excuse me, how more decent - behinds?). One could hear an encouraging one: “You’ll have a rest!”, then with a sigh: “Perhaps, on the Hill.”

The next morning I saw yesterday on a larger scale. Holding underpants by the belt, the convict queue slowly moved forward. Presented before the table of the medical commission, they turned and bared their asses. According to them, the local Aesculapius determined who was worth what: "Mountain." or "static", depending on how blue and skinny the ass is. So the doctors needed a certain skill, and if you want, the art of diagnosis. The institutes did not pass that.

Another two weeks passed. It's time for me to show my ass. Apparently, he seemed to the Aesculapius worthy of the Miner, and I thundered into the stage. They all went up and up “along the valley without reindeer moss”, and then quite abruptly - to the hill. The camp consisted of two large two-story buildings, where the lower one went into a hill, then a dining room, towers ... I didn’t have time to see it to the end, as I received a strong blow and fell on the stones. Above me I heard: “What are you twisting your head? Are you going to run?"

It turns out that the guards and the convoy here practiced hitting the neck with the edge of their palm. It was necessary to beat so that the convict immediately beat off the pamoroki and he fell to the ground. In addition, I was wearing completely new clothes, and I had to immediately make it clear to the recruit where he was. Not to the mother-in-law for pancakes. It seemed that the warders and guards, all the authorities, fiercely hated people branded with numbers. They beat me for no reason with anything, knocked me down and kicked me, boasting to each other - we are patriots! But for some reason they did not rush to the front.

But here is another case. In the penal brigade, I met Urazbekov. He was swarthy and dark-eyed, from somewhere in Central Asia or the Caucasus. He spoke Russian well and was well-read. Perhaps a party or scientific worker.

I can't live like this! I don't want to turn into cattle. It's better to lay hands on yourself, - somehow escaped from him.

How? We don't have a rope for our pants, let alone hang ourselves.

So I'm thinking: how?

Do you have relatives? I asked.

Mother. And also a wife, children, if you have not forgotten. It would be better to forget. But anyway, thank you for everything. Urazbekov's voice warmed up.

You see now. Need to live. Tell you one thought? Thinking for a year is stupid. But for a month it is possible, even for a day. Tell yourself in the morning: will I have the strength to survive until dinner? Lived - and you set a new goal: to live until the evening. And there - dinner, night, rest, sleep. And so - from stage to stage, from day to day.

Curious theory! Urazbekov thought. - There's something in her.

Of course have! You do not set yourself a large-scale goal: let's say, survive the winter. A very real milestone - three to four hours. And there is a day and another day! We just need to get together.

Tempting! This can only come to the head of a former suicide bomber.

We are all suicide bombers. Try! It's been two weeks. That day I was not at work - I hurt my hand. At noon, the orderly Shubin, taking lunch to the brigade, said:

Urazbekov was shot!

He climbed aboard the gorge, stepped behind the board "Forbidden Zone", said: "Well, I'm off, fighter!" He raised his rifle: “Where? Back! Stop! And Urazbekov is coming. Well, the fighter fired. First like in the air, and then into it. Or maybe vice versa.

Sighed: he was a good guy. Harmless. But a fighter for vigilance will receive a vacation. And alcohol.

On the "Gornyak" it was necessary to restore an abandoned adit. Its mouth and rail track were littered with collapsed rock - large boulders and stones. Mechanisms due to steep ascents and descents could not be brought to the adit. One brigade, another tried to clear it by hand - there was not enough skill. What to do? Burned plan. Then our permanent overseer suggested to the mountain authorities: "Let's try my bandits, huh?" So we were easily called - not insulting, but as if it goes without saying. The authorities hesitated, then waved their hand: "Come on."

In the morning they brought us to the adit, set up a cordon. Asked:
- Well, how will you open the adit?
- Let's try. Just take the guard away. And so we looked. And one more condition: as soon as we clear the rubble, we will go to the camp. Not waiting for the end of the shift.
- Frets.
Oh, and we worked hard on that day! Even Kostya Bychkov himself and his henchmen Mikhailov and Urkalyga could not resist and took on the largest boulders. They were pushed against steep cracks and crowbars, smashed with sledgehammers, loaded into trolleys with the help of a “living crane”. The last one was our invention. One or two knelt down, and an oversized stone was placed on their backs. Then people, grabbing their arms and shoulders, were helped to stand up and with common efforts they threw the stone into the trolley. Like this!
Unbridled excitement seized everyone. There was something Buslaevskoe, liberated in that. Somewhere in the side went hard labor.

Everything! We finished clearing two hours before the rail banging sounded, heralding the end of the job. We loaded a couple of rock trolleys and unloaded them into a dump. A test flight is a sign that the adit is open, ready for action. We were promised a bonus - half a loaf of bread per person and a pack of makhorka. We didn't go to the camp. They asked that bread and shag be brought here. Then they stood and smoked, looking down. A wide view opened from the site - the camp, the Bremsberg and the Shaitan factory, the valley to the Middle Butugychag. Two hours of freedom!
Even the devil would not have found a better place for hard labor than Sopka. Lifeless bare peaks, like on the moon. The most severe frosts and wind burned out all living things - grasses and people. Trees, even shrubs, did not grow here.

The Butugychag quarry differed little from the KARLAG copper quarry. An anthill of people, so often it was described in memoirs.

Fur. shop. As if only yesterday the workers left, leaving the tool.

Natural rocks exacerbate all the tragedy of these places, silent witnesses of the past.

And, of course, bars.

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For help in the preparation of this material.

Is there any other evidence that the remains, pillars are masses from the thickening of waste during ancient prey metals by borehole underground leaching? Other than the possible caves below them? It turns out that some of these remnants are located in uranium deposits.

Abandoned uranium mines in Chukotka. The mine shaft goes right under the remnants!


The remains are located on some hills. Perhaps there are caves inside them and there is still a certain amount of uranium left. A tip for geologists. Or do they know about this relationship?

Kekurs or weathering pillars as geology calls them here

Of course, the remnants are not on all the hills, and something is left for man. Barracks of the camp mine. You can see the dumps from the underground working, made by the prisoners.

Height map. Pay attention to how many places with remnants are located there!

Old photo of CHAUNLAG - uranium mine

Mine 62 km. (dev.) OLP Chaunlag

High-quality surveys of the former uranium objects of Chaunlag (Chukotka, 70 km northeast of Pevek):

The Chaunsky ITL (Chaunlag, ITL Upr. p / box 14) of the Dalstroy Gulag functioned from August 1951 to April 1953. The maximum number of prisoners working there at the same time reached 11,000 people. Chaunlag was founded to develop a uranium deposit discovered in 1947.

The first uranium in the USSR began to be mined back in the 1920s. in Tajikistan. The first industrial reactor near Chelyabinsk was launched in 1948. The first atomic explosion in Kazakhstan was carried out in 1949. And here, east of Pevek, development began only in 1950. Obviously, in fact, Pevek uranium could not be the raw material for the first Kurchatov tests. Rather, for the first Soviet mass-produced atomic warheads, which began to be produced in 1951.

Mine 62 km. OLP Chaunlag. Kekura.

Vicinity of the "Eastern" mine. In the background, the mountain looks like a giant waste heap. Perhaps they used different technologies, like we do now?

Helicopter view of the Vostochny mine.

kekury

It is very likely that these modern dumps are located on the site of giant ancient

OLP "Vostochny". Destroyed barracks against the backdrop of kekurs and dumps.

In the early 1950s uranium production at Dalstroy has consistently grown. For 1948-1955 Dalstroy produced about 150 tons of uranium in concentrate. But the cost of local uranium was quite high, constantly exceeding the planned one. In 1954, the cost of 1 kg of uranium concentrate according to Dalstroy was 3,774 rubles. with a planned one of 3057 rubles. The average content in the North was 0.1 percent. This is approximately one kilogram of uranium per ton of ore. In those years, poor ores were also used. But even then such deposits were called small, and now it is not even considered a deposit. Yes, ore occurrence. BUT large deposits were in Romania, but ours was discovered, and a lot of uranium was transported from there, then from Germany.

In connection with the mass amnesty of prisoners, work began to gradually curtail. During 1956, the last uranium mining facilities of Dalstroy in Chukotka were liquidated.

More photos of these places:

Dumps of rock among kekurs. So here they mined uranium right under them

And here there is even some sense in their location.

A similar place where remnants adjoin uranium mines is not the only one.

Kolyma. Uranium mine "Butugychag"

Kolyma. Abandoned uranium mine. Again remnants, megaliths. There is definitely a connection with uranium mining. Not with modern loot. And from the last, larger one. We mine in the old poor mines after someone. We eat snacks.

Remnant and modern dumps

From the moment of its organization in 1937, the Butugychag mine was part of the YuGPU - the Southern Mining Administration and at first was a tin mine.
in February 1948, at the Butugychag mine, a camp department No. 4 of a special camp No. 5 - Berlag "Coast Camp" was organized. At the same time, uranium ore began to be mined here. In this regard, Combine No. 1 was organized on the basis of the uranium deposit.
A hydrometallurgical plant with a capacity of 100 tons of uranium ore per day began to be built at Butugychag. As of January 1, 1952, the number of employees in the First Directorate of Dalstroy increased to 14,790 people. This was the maximum number of people employed in construction and mining operations in this department. Then a decline also began in the extraction of uranium ore, and by the beginning of 1953 there were only 6130 people in it. In 1954, the supply of workers for the main enterprises of the First Directorate of Dalstroy fell even more and amounted to only 840 people at Butugychag.

Don't you think that there are more ancient dumps in the background?

The slopes of these hills consist of such a small kurumnik. Well, why not dumps of waste rock? Erosion destroys rocks into sand and dust, and not into small and not very stone.

If you do not report that this is supposedly natural, then it will completely pass for mounds of waste rock

Layered remnants in the background

In conclusion, I will add information about borehole in-situ leaching (ISL):

The usual way of mining uranium is to extract the ore from the bowels, crush it and process it to obtain the desired metals. In SPV technology, also known as solution mining, the rock is left in situ, holes are drilled across the deposit area, through which fluids are then pumped to leach the metal from the ore. In world practice, in the process of SPV, solutions based on acids and alkalis are used, however, in Russia, as well as in Australia, Canada and Kazakhstan, the latter are not used, preferring sulfuric acid H2SO4. The extraction of radioactive metal in our country is carried out by the traditional mine method and modern method borehole in-situ leaching (ISL). The latter already accounts for more than 30% of the total production volume.

The main role in the downhole underground leaching process is played by pumps. They are used already at the very first stage - pumping out groundwater, to which an acidic reagent and an oxidizing component based on hydrogen peroxide or oxygen are then added. Then, using downhole equipment, the solution is pumped into the geotechnical field. The uranium-enriched liquid enters the production wells, from where it is again sent to the processing plant with the help of pumps, where, in the process of sorption, the uranium settles on the ion-exchange resin. Then the metal is chemically separated, the suspension is dehydrated and dried to obtain the final product. The process solution is again saturated with oxygen (if necessary, with sulfuric acid) and returned to the cycle.

Sources:
http://wikimapia.org/11417231/en/Rudnik-62-km-development-OLP-Chaunlag
http://www.mirstroek.ru/articles/moreinfo/?id=12125
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And another example, but from a different place. Notice the details in this photo of a polystratic tree fossil:

It is possible that the waste rock was poured directly into the forest using the SPV technology (if we talk about the topic of underground leaching of metals). And it has nothing to do with the flood. Unfortunately, I don't know the location.