Minetest villages11/30/2023 ![]() The Semipalatinsk Complex was of acute interest to foreign governments during its operation, particularly during the phase when explosions were carried out above ground at the experimental field. The location of Kurchatov city has been typically shown on various maps as "Konechnaya", the name of the train station, now Degelen, or "Moldary", the name of the village that was later incorporated into the city. The lab complex, still the administrative and scientific centre of the STS, was renamed Kurchatov City after Igor Kurchatov, leader of the initial Soviet nuclear programme. ![]() After the closure of the Semipalatinsk labour camp, construction duties were performed by the 217th Separate Engineering and Mining Battalion, who later built the Baikonur Cosmodrome.īetween 1949 and the cessation of atomic testing in 1989, 456 explosions were conducted at the STS, including 340 underground borehole and tunnel shots and 116 atmospheric, either air-drop or tower shots. Once atmospheric tests were banned, testing was transferred to underground locations at Chagan, Murzhik in the west, and at the Degelen mountain complex in the south, which is riddled with boreholes and drifts for both subcritical and supercritical tests. Later tests were moved to the Chagan River complex and nearby Balapan in the east of the STS, including the site of the Chagan test, which formed Chagan Lake. The same area, "the experimental field", a region 64 km (40 mi) west of Kurchatov city, was used for more than 100 subsequent above-ground weapons tests. The first Soviet bomb test, Operation First Lightning, nicknamed Joe One by the Americans, was conducted in 1949 from a tower at the Semipalatinsk Test Site, scattering fallout on nearby villages, which Beria had neglected to evacuate. Gulag labour was employed to build the primitive test facilities, including the laboratory complex in the northeast corner on the southern bank of the Irtysh River. Beria falsely claimed the vast 18,000 km² steppe was "uninhabited". The site was selected in 1947 by Lavrentiy Beria, political head of the Soviet atomic bomb project. 2008 photo Igor Kurchatov's radio and a portrait of Vladimir Lenin, found at the old test site History The various facilities grouped inside the Semipalatinsk Test Site Crater from a USSR nuclear test at Semipalatinsk. Since its closure on 29 August 1991, the Semipalatinsk Test Site has become the best-researched nuclear testing site in the world, and the only one in the world open to the public year-round. įrom 1996 to 2012, a secret joint operation of Kazakh, Russian, and American nuclear scientists and engineers secured the waste plutonium in the tunnels of the mountains. According to estimates from Kazakh experts, 1.5 million people were exposed to fallout over the years. ![]() ![]() The full impact of radiation exposure was hidden for many years by Soviet authorities and has only come to light since the test site closed in 1991. The Soviet Union conducted 456 nuclear tests at Semipalatinsk from 1949 until 1989 with little regard for their effect on the local people or environment. Most of the nuclear tests taking place at various sites further to the west and the south, some as far as into Karagandy Region. The scientific buildings for the test site were located around 150 km (93 mi) west of the town of Semipalatinsk, later renamed Semey, near the border of East Kazakhstan Region and Pavlodar Region. It is located on the steppe in northeast Kazakhstan (in the former Kazakh SSR), south of the valley of the Irtysh River. The Semipalatinsk Test Site ( Russian: Семипалатинск-21 Semipalatinsk-21), also known as " The Polygon", was the primary testing venue for the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons. The 18,000 km 2 expanse of the Semipalatinsk Test Site (indicated in red), attached to Kurchatov (along the Irtysh river), and near Semey, as well as Karagandy, and Astana.
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