Kadji-Sai

Kadji-Sai, located in the Ton district of Kyrgyzstan’s Issyk-Kul region, had a population of 4,456 as of 2018. Established in 1947 as a labor settlement, it sits on the southern shore of Lake Issyk-Kul at an elevation of 1,979 meters above sea level. Its history is closely tied to the Soviet Union's military and nuclear programs, which drove uranium exploration and extraction in Kyrgyzstan starting in 1943.

Uranium mining in Kadji-Sai was conducted at the Sogutin deposit, where uranium oxide was extracted from the ashes of brown coal. Mining operations at the site ran from 1949 to 1966/68, with further processing carried out by the Kara-Balta Mining Enterprise. The village is home to a uranium tailing containing 0.4 million cubic meters of waste. This uranium waste dump is located approximately 180 meters above Lake Issyk-Kul and 2.5 kilometers from Kadji-Sai’s residential area known as "Promka," the former industrial zone 3 kilometers from the village center.

By the late 1960s, uranium mining activities ceased due to low profitability. Coal mining then became the primary industrial activity, sustaining the livelihoods of the local population until the 1990s.

Due to the environmental and health risks associated with its uranium mining legacy, Kadji-Sai has been a focus of various international remediation and development projects. These initiatives, primarily funded by organizations such as UNDP, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and Rosatom, aim to mitigate the impacts of uranium mining and promote public awareness. Notable examples include Phase I of the project "Socio-Economic Development of Communities Around Radioactive Sites in Kyrgyzstan" (2014) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) program "Remediation of Territories of States Affected by Uranium Mining Operations" (2013−2023).