Horses stand in front of a building of an abandoned uranium combine in the township of Kajy-Say
Horses stand in front of a building of an abandoned uranium combine which closed in 1968, in the township of Kajy-Say, some 300 km (188 miles) east of Bishkek March 13, 2013. The population of the once bustling township has shrunk to about 2,500 from 15,000, its abandoned Soviet-built apartment houses gape with broken windows, and unemployed locals eke out a living by dismantling idle industrial buildings for construction materials. Paying no heed to radioactivity signs, some locals dig into uranium tailings, looking for machinery buried in Soviet times to extract non-ferrous metals which they sell as scrap. Picture taken March 13. TO GO WITH STORY KYRGYZSTAN-GOLD/ REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov (KYRGYZSTAN - Tags: BUSINESS COMMODITIES ENVIRONMENT POLITICS CITYSPACE)