Abandoned Russian nuclear lighthouses

A friend of mine sent me this post from the site “English Russia” (which has the great tagline “just because something cool happens daily on 1/6 of the Earth’s surface”), about abandoned Russian polar nuclear lighthouses. During the days of the Soviet Union, the Russians built a series of lighthouses along the country’s northern coast. And since many of them would be located hundreds of miles from the nearest human settlement, the Soviets decided to power each with its own miniature nuclear power plant.

Like many things in the former Soviet Union though they fell victim to the hard economic times of the 1990s and were abandoned, and in many cases looted (though the looters will be easy to identify at the scrap yards since they’ll be the only people glowing). It is an interesting story, but I’m really posting it since it gives me an excuse to run this really cool picture: