On a somewhat related note, there was a Soviet era film called 'Stalker' by Andrey Tarkovskiy that had some scenes filmed in an abandoned industrial plant in I think Lithuania.
Apparently several members of the cast & crew developed cancers later in life that, it has been claimed, were caused by exposure to chemical contamination at the plant.
As part of the film trivia section at IMDB, there's the following piece: -
"The Zone of the film was inspired by a nuclear accident that took place near Chelyabinsk in 1957. Several hundred square kilometers were polluted by fallout and abandoned; of course there was no official mention of this forbidden zone at the time."
I'm at work and the work network blocks popups so I can't use most of the reply menu here, so... here's the IMDB link for Stalker
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079944/