The secret city.

For 42 years the Siberian city of Mayak was the principal nuclear bomb factory of the Soviet Union. Its prosperity ended in 1957 with a nuclear disaster which wiped the city off the official map of the (then) Soviet Union. Thirty years of silence followed, with life going on in Mayak in apparent normality, although the city's identity was reduced to a postal district number and sealed off from the outside world. The film reveals the extrodinary, devastated landscape of the countryside around Mayak and shows, how life continues in this hostile environment. Western scientists are now allowed into Mayak to study this virtual laboratory of radiation effects. "The Secret City" is an astonshing record of survival in one of the world's most dangerous nuclear wastelands.