The Missing Mountain (2024- ongoing)
Research in progress
The miner builds the sky. With tiny, shiny lamps he makes the moon, the stars, and the sun, just like a wizard.
(lyrics from a propaganda song)
The Băița Bihor site in Romania's Western Carpathians, sometimes known as Little Chornobyl by locals, is one of Europe's largest nuclear waste sites, now located in the hollowed-out ruins of a former uranium mine. A whole mountain was 'moved' to the Soviet Union by the end of the 1950s. Trains were utilized to move the crushed ore from Romanian crushing mills to the secret town of Sillamae, which is now in Estonia, where it was processed before being used for the Soviet atomic bomb project. This was considered as payment for war reparations owed by Romania, which had previously been a German ally.
After the war, Romania became a Soviet satellite state, which also involved the establishment of joint Soviet-Romanian companies including SovRom-Petrol, Sovrom-Bank, Sovrom-Transport, Sovrom-Film, and others. Established in 1951, Sovrom-Quartz was a covert business that extracted uranium under the pretense of extracting quartz. Thousands of political prisoners worked for it at the Băiţa mine. In 1965, the SovRoms (including the phony SovromQuartz) were disbanded and the supply of uranium was exhausted. The Romanian government continued mining from the debris left behind by the Soviets. The local miners' joke about Baita Plai, which is still considered an overlooked part of Romanian history: "It's like a bottle of champagne; opening it, will explode”
The current population of Baita Plai is 92, which coincidentally is the Mendeleev table's atomic number for uranium. The area is still radioactive because the houses are built from rocks coming from that mountain including mining waste. The abandoned mine now serves as a storage for radioactive waste, much of which is nuclear waste from Western Europe, but also other sources.
When the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, there were hundreds of Soviet nuclear weapons on Ukrainian land. Some of these nuclear warheads contained uranium coming from the missing mountain at the Baita site in Romania. During the 1990s up until 2001, Ukraine, alongside Belarus and Kazakhstan which also had former Soviet nuclear weapons on their territory, agreed to accede to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. They transferred the nuclear weapons to Russia for dismantlement and decommissioning, in this way, ensuring sovereignty.
During the process of “denuclearization”, an economic agreement was signed between Russia and the United States called Megatons to Megawatts. The nuclear warheads were dismantled, the highly enriched uranium was diluted in Russia, and then the resulting low-enriched uranium was purchased by the United States Enrichment Corporation and distributed to various power utility customers who then used the fuel to generate electricity, including the Pentagon.
So, American nuclear power facilities have been producing electricity from weapons-grade uranium from Russian atomic warheads from the Cold War for almost 20 years.
One may argue that American houses and companies are illuminated by the vanished uranium mountain from Baita Plai.
In September last year, while conducting research at Sillame, we came upon a uranium rock that may have come from Baita in the Western Carpathians. It might have been a rock that managed to escape the processing. That rock piqued our interest. Uranium spans time scales, bodies, histories, and industries because of the unstable nature of its isotopes. In our opinion, uranium is not so much a mineral as it is a shape-shifter and a time-traveler that connects histories, communities, and industries. In the film, a rock sitting on a museum exhibit shelf and gazing through the glass at visitors is prospecting and speculating on the planet's future.
supported by SAVA The Postsocialist Art Centre (PACT)
Research in progress
The miner builds the sky. With tiny, shiny lamps he makes the moon, the stars, and the sun, just like a wizard.
(lyrics from a propaganda song)
The Băița Bihor site in Romania's Western Carpathians, sometimes known as Little Chornobyl by locals, is one of Europe's largest nuclear waste sites, now located in the hollowed-out ruins of a former uranium mine. A whole mountain was 'moved' to the Soviet Union by the end of the 1950s. Trains were utilized to move the crushed ore from Romanian crushing mills to the secret town of Sillamae, which is now in Estonia, where it was processed before being used for the Soviet atomic bomb project. This was considered as payment for war reparations owed by Romania, which had previously been a German ally.
After the war, Romania became a Soviet satellite state, which also involved the establishment of joint Soviet-Romanian companies including SovRom-Petrol, Sovrom-Bank, Sovrom-Transport, Sovrom-Film, and others. Established in 1951, Sovrom-Quartz was a covert business that extracted uranium under the pretense of extracting quartz. Thousands of political prisoners worked for it at the Băiţa mine. In 1965, the SovRoms (including the phony SovromQuartz) were disbanded and the supply of uranium was exhausted. The Romanian government continued mining from the debris left behind by the Soviets. The local miners' joke about Baita Plai, which is still considered an overlooked part of Romanian history: "It's like a bottle of champagne; opening it, will explode”
The current population of Baita Plai is 92, which coincidentally is the Mendeleev table's atomic number for uranium. The area is still radioactive because the houses are built from rocks coming from that mountain including mining waste. The abandoned mine now serves as a storage for radioactive waste, much of which is nuclear waste from Western Europe, but also other sources.
When the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, there were hundreds of Soviet nuclear weapons on Ukrainian land. Some of these nuclear warheads contained uranium coming from the missing mountain at the Baita site in Romania. During the 1990s up until 2001, Ukraine, alongside Belarus and Kazakhstan which also had former Soviet nuclear weapons on their territory, agreed to accede to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. They transferred the nuclear weapons to Russia for dismantlement and decommissioning, in this way, ensuring sovereignty.
During the process of “denuclearization”, an economic agreement was signed between Russia and the United States called Megatons to Megawatts. The nuclear warheads were dismantled, the highly enriched uranium was diluted in Russia, and then the resulting low-enriched uranium was purchased by the United States Enrichment Corporation and distributed to various power utility customers who then used the fuel to generate electricity, including the Pentagon.
So, American nuclear power facilities have been producing electricity from weapons-grade uranium from Russian atomic warheads from the Cold War for almost 20 years.
One may argue that American houses and companies are illuminated by the vanished uranium mountain from Baita Plai.
In September last year, while conducting research at Sillame, we came upon a uranium rock that may have come from Baita in the Western Carpathians. It might have been a rock that managed to escape the processing. That rock piqued our interest. Uranium spans time scales, bodies, histories, and industries because of the unstable nature of its isotopes. In our opinion, uranium is not so much a mineral as it is a shape-shifter and a time-traveler that connects histories, communities, and industries. In the film, a rock sitting on a museum exhibit shelf and gazing through the glass at visitors is prospecting and speculating on the planet's future.
supported by SAVA The Postsocialist Art Centre (PACT)