More than 250 trucks, troop carriers, excavators and even helicopters lie rusting in a corner of the�Buriakovka low- and intermediate-radioactive solid-waste site in the empty countryside some 25 kilometerss from Chernobyl. Used in the emergency after the accident, the vehicles will lie for de�cades in the field until they, or their rust, cease to radiate harmfully. The fate of the vehicles� drivers is not hard to guess.
Buriakovka was completed in 1987 as a 97-hectare graveyard for the solid debris generated by the accident. It has 30 trenches, each 150 meters long, 58 m wide and 4 m deep. Each holds 23,000 cu m of anything from bricks to boilers.