More than three decades after the Soviet Union’s dissolution, the aftermaths of its atomic programme continue to haunt nuclear sites across the post-Soviet space. From Chornobyl to Ozersk and from Semei to the former uranium-mining towns of the Fergana Valley, radionuclides with half-lives exceeding human lifetimes still contaminate soil, water, air, as well as human and non-human forms of life. Yet the programme’s after-effects also extend beyond environmental degradation and human suffering to encompass, among other things, political, social, economic and legal processes, knowledge production regimes and memory practices. The collective volume Tracing the Atom: Nuclear Legacies in Russia and Central Asia, edited by Susanne Bauer and Tanja Penter, which recently appeared in Routledge’s ‘Histories of Central and Eastern Europe’ series, is an exciting endeavour to capture and conceptualize these diverse phenomena.