A secret town’s renewal, from radioactive cleanup to recycling jobs

In bone-chilling wind, Tõnis Kaasik makes his way through a maze of blackened red brick facades, metal pipes, and old chimneys to visit his staff at EcoMetal, the battery recycling company he carved out of an old Soviet uranium refinery that once fueled the USSR’s nuclear weapons arsenal.

In the distance, smoke billows from Soviet-era power and chemical plants, forming deep clouds above the chilly Baltic seashore. Used batteries arrive here at the European Union’s easternmost commercial port, which receives natural gas container ships as a major connecting point between Russia and Europe.  

For years, this now-important industrial town was shrouded in mystery, reeling from its past as a secret uranium enrichment city. By the time the USSR collapsed, a major Soviet industrial capital had become a radioactive depository with a large, unemployed,