You may be interested in the history of the Semipalatinsk Test Site, and what happened when the USSR broke up. There was something of a heroic, very secret eff

You may be interested in the history of the Semipalatinsk Test Site, and what happened when the USSR broke up. There was something of a heroic, very secret effort to get the place more or less secured and reduce its proliferation risk. https://thebulletin.org/2013/08/into-thin-air-the-story-of-plutonium-mountain/ https://thebulletin.org/2013/08/into-thin-air-the-story-of-p... > Some of these tests—particularly tests involving plutonium—did not vaporize the material in a nuclear blast. It remained in tunnels and containers, in forms that could be recovered and recycled into a bomb. In addition, the Soviet Union discarded equipment that included high-purity plutonium that would have provided materials and information that could lead to a relatively sophisticated nuclear device if it had been found. > When scientists and military personnel withdrew from Kazakhstan following the collapse of the Soviet Union, they abandoned tunnels and bore holes filled with plutonium residue—enough plutonium, if fully reclaimed, for terrorists or a state to construct dozens of nuclear bombs. Between 1991 and 2012, scavengers looking for valuable metal and equipment from the former Soviet test site came within yards of the unguarded fissile material; in two cases the scavengers broke into the vessels used to contain some of the experiments, although there is no evidence that they removed any plutonium. https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/plutonium-mountain-inside-17-year-mission-secure-legacy-soviet-nuclear-testing https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/plutonium-mountain-...