Lake Karachai
Working Here
Per Diem Rates FY 2026
Per diem covers lodging and meals & incidental expenses (M&IE) for government and contractor travel near this facility. Rates are from the U.S. State Department foreign per diem tables for FY 2026.
$173
Lodging/Night
$112
M&IE/Day
$285
Total/Day
Russia: rate for locations the State Department does not list separately
U.S. Department of State foreign per diem, for U.S. government and contractor travel.
Photos
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Facility Map
Interactive satellite map showing the facility's geographic location. Marker color indicates current status: green for online, red for offline, orange for reduced power. Click the header to open in Google Maps satellite view.
55.663, 60.8573
Location & Contact
Physical address, phone number, and website for this facility. Use the directions link to get driving directions via Google Maps.
Plant Facts
About This Site
Written by NukeWorker from public records: facts that do not change. Operator, status and capacity come from the live data elsewhere on this page. Sources: Wikipedia: Lake Karachay; Nuclear Engineering International: Karachai backfilling completed.
Lake Karachai is a small lake in the southern Urals beside the Mayak plutonium production complex near Ozyorsk, Chelyabinsk Oblast. From October 1951 Mayak used it as an open dump for radioactive waste, to keep that waste out of the Techa River, and it became one of the most radioactively contaminated places on Earth.
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In 1967 a drought exposed the lake bed, and the wind carried contaminated sediment across the surrounding area. The lake was filled in over the following decades with concrete blocks, rock and soil, work completed in November 2015 that turned it into a permanent near-surface waste store.