Mayluu-Suu ( ky, Майлуу-Суу, russian: Майли-Сай ''Mayli-Say'')
is a mining town in the
Jalal-Abad Region of southern
Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan,, pronounced or the Kyrgyz Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Asia. Kyrgyzstan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the south, and the People's Republic of China to the east. ...
. It is a city of regional significance, not part of a district.
Its area is ,
and its resident population was 25,892 in 2021.
It has been economically depressed since
the fall of the Soviet Union. From 1946 to 1968 the Zapadnyi Mining and Chemical Combine in Mayluu-Suu mined and processed more than of uranium ore for the Soviet nuclear program. Uranium mining and processing is no longer economical, leaving much of the local population of about 20,000 without meaningful work. The town was classified as one of the Soviet government's
secret cities, officially known only as "Mailbox 200". Mayluu-Suu consists of the town proper, the
urban-type settlement
Urban-type settlementrussian: посёлок городско́го ти́па, translit=posyolok gorodskogo tipa, abbreviated: russian: п.г.т., translit=p.g.t.; ua, селище міського типу, translit=selyshche mis'koho typu, ab ...
Kök-Tash and the villages Sary-Bee, Kögoy and Kara-Jygach.
[
]
Population
Uranium mills
The USSR left 23 unstable uranium
Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...
tailings
In mining, tailings are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction (gangue) of an ore. Tailings are different to overburden, which is the waste rock or other material that overlie ...
pits on the tectonic
Tectonics (; ) are the processes that control the structure and properties of the Earth's crust and its evolution through time. These include the processes of mountain building, the growth and behavior of the strong, old cores of continents k ...
ally unstable hillside above the town. A breached tailings dam in April 1958 released of radioactive tailings into the river Mayluu-Suu. In 1994, a landslide blocked the river, which flowed over its banks and flooded another waste reservoir. A flood caused by a mudslide nearly submerged a tailings pit in 2002.[ Mayluu-Suu was found to be one of the 10 most polluted sites in the world in a study published in 2006 by the Blacksmith Institute.
The ]World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Interna ...
approved a US$
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
5 million grant to reclaim the tailings pits in 2004,
References
External links
Webpage of Blacksmith Institute about Mayluu-Suu, archived from the original
Latest report on Pure Earth (formerly Blacksmith Institute), accessed 2021-02-19
{{Cities in Jalal-Abad Region
Populated places in Jalal-Abad Region
Uranium mines in the Soviet Union
Mines in Kyrgyzstan
Radioactively contaminated areas