The Japanese built the Aniva lighthouse in 1939, on a chunk of rock off the southern coast of Sakhalin, a thin 950 km long island situated just east of Russia, between the Sea of Japan and Russia’s Sea of Okhotsk. Aniva Lighthouse is a nuclear powered lighthouse and it's one of 132 nuclear powered lighthouses on Russian North coast! The view - yes true "amazing", but I don't recommend a visit to this lighthouses or similar lighthouses on Russia’s Northern coast, because of high radiation levels inside and in the vicinity! They have been abandoned a long time ago!
These nuclear powered lighthouses were built by the Soviet Union as un-manned lighthouses in the very difficult and un-inhabitable environment of Northern Russia. These lighthoses were programmed to run by themselves. However, these lighthouses began collapsing following the collapse of the USSR. Looters broke into these lighthouses unmindful of the dangers and destroyed the equipment there. In the summer of 2001, two people received radioactive doses after they attempted to dismantle the lighthouse near Kandalaksha in Murmansk region. They tried to extract lead from the lighthouse in order to sell it later as scrap metal. They were not aware of the fact that there was a strong radiation source inside the lighthouse.
This very attractive card with lovely stamps on them, was sent to me by my friend Masha in Moscow.
