A closer look
Soviet engineers in the Cold War era powered their remote coastal lighthouses and navigation beacons using unsecured radioisotope thermoelectric generators, effectively creating hundreds of miniature, unmonitored nuclear reactors scattered across the wilderness. Because running power lines to the Arctic Circle was incredibly expensive, they just dumped highly radioactive batteries on freezing cliffs to keep the maritime transport lights blinking for passing cargo ships. Predictably, when the Soviet Union collapsed, these glowing death-cylinders were completely abandoned, leaving local metal scavengers to frequently stumble upon them and suffer horrific radiation burns while trying to scrap them for copper. It is arguably the most aggressively Russian solution to a logistical problem ever conceived, combining raw scientific ingenuity with an absolutely catastrophic disregard for long-term safety. Who needs reliable maintenance schedules when you can just leave a chunk of spicy metal to glow in the dark for a thousand years
