In another round of truly awful news for Tajiks, two former Soviet nuclear waste sites located in the northern Sughd region are not adequately sealed and will not be in the near future. Some of the dust has been escaping out of these mounds of waste and contaminating water and soil.
So far, the dust has been seaping out only a little bit, resulting in a slightly higher rate of cancer and other diseases. But remember that Tajikistan sits on a fault line and there is no barrier between the waste and the surrounding area if it were to be unsecured. For now, heavy rains and wind cause the dust to spread all over the region, even reaching the Syr Darya. There are no plans to seal the sites nor any money for them. It would cost hundreds of millions of dollars for the poorest country in Central Asia to secure the nuclear waste left there by the Soviet Union.
