Collecting Minerals In Estonia

Calcite Crystals from the Kukersite Oil Shale.

- Jim Sullivan

When I told my colleagues that I was moving to Estonia, I received a lot of criticism. “What are you doing?” they asked. “Estonia has no mineralization!” they said. I held my head high and announced that Estonia has no mineralization because the science has not been performed. They laughed and told me that, during the Soviet occupation, the most elite of scientists scoured the country and came up with nothing. The only thing that can be found in Estonia, they claimed, is phosphorite and oil shale.

To their credit, they are almost correct. Estonia does possess the largest phosphorite deposit in the entirety of continental Europe (it’s actually number 14 on the EU list of critical minerals), and the oil shales that have been found in the northern areas of the country are well known and researched. In fact, the Soviets exploited the uranium from this site during their occupation of Estonia, and processed it into usable material for their nuclear weaponry. Russia has detonated at least four nuclear devices using material derived from Estonian uranium.

The city of Sillamäe, in Ida-Viru County, northeastern Estonia, was once the headquarters of the Russian nuclear program. It’s known as the “Secret City”. Beginning in 1958, the city was sealed by the Soviet government. You could liken it to Los Alamos in the United States. It’s where the smartest scientists were sent to conduct their top-secret experiments, which led to the development of the Soviet nuclear arsenal.

The city was guarded and access was severely restricted. Its location was even removed from maps as a security measure. The world only became aware of the place after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. Today, the radioactive dumps left behind by the processing plant are listed among the four most dangerous places in Europe.