Underground tank farm with 12 of the site’s 177 waste storage tanks, photo United States Department of Energy.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, two US teams visited Russia to study Mayak, focusing on the Soviet’s 1957 nuclear accident as well as on waste impacts on underground aquifers. Dr. Donald Alexander, a retired high-level DOE physical chemist who worked at Hanford, Mayak’s sister site in the US, was a member of the 1990 delegation. At the time, Alexander was the director of the International Technology Transfer program for the Office of Environmental Management in Washington, DC.
