Secret city
Snezhinsk, Russia, kept a secret for 35 years—its own existence. The city, revealed only in 1992, is one of several developed in the 1950s for weapons development and manufacturing in the former Soviet Union. But in recent years, Snezhinsk's Scientific Research Institute for Technical Physics fabricated parts for the CMS detector being built for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
"It's hard to get to, but a very beautiful place with great people," says Nural Akchurin, a CMS collaborator from Texas Tech University, who has visited the city several times. "To get there you fly to Ekaterinburg in the Urals and drive for two hours on country roads, and all of a sudden guards and barbed wire appear. Once you're there, you have a minder, a guy who follows you everywhere. You feel like you have gone back 50 years."
Snezhinsk is home to almost 50,000 people, 80 percent of whom work for the Institute or the Russian Federal Nuclear Center. Although only half of the research performed now is weapons-related, Snezhinsk is still a closed city.
"You can't leave and your mother can't visit without permission from Moscow," says Akchurin. "Wives work there, husbands work there, their kids go to school there. They grow up not knowing much of anything outside the city. A few of the young guys came to CERN, and it was a huge culture shock for them."
Katie Yurkewicz
