The village of Romanovka is located 50km from the Talakan uranium mine. Uranium concentrates are transported across the River Vitim by ferries and cargo boats. Some of the mine's abandoned ditches, known to be radioactive, were for many years exposed to open air, and studies showed a correlation between air- and water-borne exposure to this uranium supply and a cancer cluster in the local community. However, as is frequently the case with mining in developing regions, there had been no technical documentation throughout this mine's history and thus solidly proving a causal link was difficult. The village is also located just 1.5 km from other natural uranium deposits, and residents are known to raise crops and livestock in those zones. Regardless of the immediate source, villagers were definitely suffering from exposure to radioactive material.

There are twenty three tailing dumps and thirteen waste rock dumps scattered throughout Mailuu-Suu, Kyrgyzstan, home to a former Soviet-era uranium plant. From 1946-1968 the plant produced and processed more than 10,000 metric tons of uranium ore--products eventually used to create the Soviet Union's first atomic bomb. What remains now are not atomic bombs, but 1.96 million cubic meters of radioactive mining waste. The combination of unsecured radioactive waste with the region's high seismic activity threatens to contaminate the drinking water supply of the entire Ferghana valley: a fertile and densely-populated area, with inhabitants in the hundreds of thousands, stretching throughout Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. In May 2002 a huge mudslide blocked the course of the Mailuu-Suu river and threatened to submerge another toxic waste site. In April 2005 the Obschestvenny Reiting newspaper reported that after another earthquake and landslide, about 300,000 cubic meters of material fell into the Mailuu-Suu River near the uranium mine tailings.

The village of Romanovka is located 50km from the Talakan uranium mine. Uranium concentrates are transported across the River Vitim by ferries and cargo boats. Some of its abandoned ditches, known to be radioactive, were for many years exposed to open air, and studies showed a correlation between air- and water-borne exposure to this uranium supply and a cancer cluster in the local community. However, as is frequently the case with mining in developing regions, there had been no technical documentation throughout this mine's history and thus solidly proving a link was difficult. The village is also located just 1.5 km from other natural uranium deposits, and residents are known to raise crops and livestock there. Regardless of the immediate source, villagers were definitely suffering from exposure to radioactive material.