While working on my book, I did not try to select facts that confirm or refute someone’s positions and points of views. My main goal was to collect as much reliable information as possible and present it in the most accessible, and if possible, in a fascinating way. I did this in order to popularize a problem that I consider to be one of the most serious problems of our time. Moreover, it cannot be attributed only to the field of ecology. It is also a social, economic, and in the foreseeable future, a political problem.
To verify the correctness of the chosen approach and the objectivity of the data presented, I gave both the first book «The Mayak Plant – half a Century of Problems» and the second book «The Mayak Plant – a Problem for the Ages» to specialists and experts involved in overcoming the consequences of the development of the nuclear military-industrial complex of the former USSR. Despite the difference of views and belonging of these specialists to opposing organizations and public groups, they all highly appreciated the work done. Their brief reviews are presented at the beginning of the book. For more thoughtful readers, the original expert reviews are presented in Appendix 8.
Here is the third edition of my book, revised and supplemented with some new data, which I called «The Atomic „Mayak“ – a Problem for the Ages». I hope I have managed to write a book that, if not reconciles, then at least clarifies, and perhaps brings together the positions of those who approach the solution of the same tasks and problems of the nuclear military-industrial complex of the former USSR and modern Russia from different sides. There are a lot of problems. And the more people understand the real scale of the disaster, the more realistic the program of joint actions aimed at overcoming the consequences of the era of nuclear madness will be. Moreover, it does not seem to be over yet…
In the mid-forties of the twentieth century, when the main strategic task of the Soviet Union was to create its own atomic weapons, «secret» cities began to appear on the territory of the USSR. They could not be talked about, they were not written about in the press, they still do not exist on maps. These cities became the centers of the nascent nuclear industry. This book is dedicated to one of these cities. We are talking about the city where the personnel of the nuclear facility, currently known as the «Mayak» Combine production association, or «Mayak» for short, lived and worked.