The testing workshop in Zaton was sealed, with the test Gauss cannon and all documentation. The entire project was scrapped in 2004, as a compact-enough power source could not be found.
Cardan, one future stalker, was one of contractors involved in its development, as a designer. The project that eventually birthed the Gauss rifle focused on creating weapons based on the principle of projectile acceleration via an electromagnetic field.
The first designs for the rifle came from a covert weapons research program in the Chernobyl Zone of Exclusion, before the Zone even came into being.