by Togzhan Kassenova
During the rainy, windy early morning of August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union conducted its first nuclear explosion–code-named “First Lightning”–at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in eastern Kazakhstan. Witnesses remember feeling the ground tremble and seeing the sky turn red–and how that red sky was quickly dominated by a peculiar mushroom-shaped cloud. The Soviet military and scientific personnel conducting the test knew that the rain and wind would make the local population more susceptible to radioactive fallout. But at the time, authorities disregarded the consequences for the sake of military and political goals. Throughout the next 40 years, such a trade-off would become all too familiar to those living at and around the test site. In all, the Soviet Union conducted 456 nuclear tests at Semipalatinsk (340 underground and 116 aboveground), starting with that first one in August 1949 and ending with the final test on October 19, 1989. In 1991, Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev officially closed the site and ordered that medical help and compensation be provided to those suffering from illness due to testing.
During the first decades of testing, the Soviet military built a secret research and administrative center 60 kilometers away from the testing grounds–a new town that the outside world would come to know only as Semipalatinsk-21. Given its secret mission, Semipalatinsk-21 was never identified on any official maps. As such, it was surrounded by barbed wire, and the flow of people in and out of the town was strictly controlled. Later, the town would be renamed Kurchatov, after the man who helped the Soviet Union obtain the bomb. The largest civilian town, Semipalatinsk, was located 160 kilometers away; while a few rural settlements were scattered nearby the site.
Although it has been 20 years since the last nuclear weapon was exploded in Kazakhstan, its people still have vivid memories of the Soviet testing era–memories that they kindly shared with me during a three-week trip I took there in July. Take, for instance, Gulsum Kakimzhanova, the head of the nongovernmental organization Iris, which is based in Semipalatinsk and helps those affected by the testing find the proper medical and social care. (During one project, Iris arranged breast cancer screenings for more than 18,000 women who live in areas close to the former test site.) Kakimzhanova herself was born in 1952 at a railway settlement not far from Semipalatinsk. The effects of the tests were everywhere. “One morning when I was a small girl, my father awoke to find all of his hair had fallen off onto his pillow overnight,” she told me. “Only many years later, when I began working on health issues as a trained biologist, did I realize that my father’s hair loss was likely caused by radiation exposure while he labored outside as a railway worker near the test site.”
Natalya Zhdanova, who lived in Kurchatov from 1968 to 2000, remembers that announcements about the tests were broadcast on the local radio stations, along with movie show times and weather forecasts. As a member of a military family whose relatives were involved in the testing, she never worried about how the tests might impact her or her family’s health. In fact, it was apparent when I spoke with her that she viewed the military presence in Semipalatinsk patriotically: “People were not afraid of radiation–maybe because nobody was suffering from leukemia or other diseases. Our fathers and husbands worked in this field, and they never had any health problems, apart from the great responsibility that came with the task. And everyone always followed safety procedures.
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for more