Semipalatinsk Test Site 20 Years Later

Author: Gregory Bedenko
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Not so long ago Kazakhstan celebrated the 20th anniversary of the closure of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site. Two decades. It seems to be quite a short time, but in that time a whole generation that knows about the barbarian weapon and its testing only from the stories of their parents. And even more, this young generation is difficult to understand why a great part of the territory of their own country is actually lost forever. Meanwhile, for 20 years the landfill life of its own. And as it turns out, the cessation of nuclear testing and the hydrogen bomb, does not mean that destructive processes in the environment have stopped. The phenomenon of Kazakhstani nuclear science in a special photo essay of Gregory Bedenko.





The main attraction of the former landfill - "atomic & quot; Lake, which is on the test site "Balapan". It was formed as a result of the explosion of thermonuclear warhead capacity of 140 kilotons in 1965. The diameter of the lake is 500 meters depth from the surface to the bottom of 80 meters. In a similar way the Soviet strategists had planned to build reservoirs in arid regions of the Soviet Union.



Which is amazing, close to the lake, about two kilometers inhabited. Bred cattle drink water from the contaminated river. Local authorities look the other way.



Drawdown of the earth as a result of an underground nuclear explosion. The so-called "fighting well".



The former center of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site - the city of Kurchatov, a sample of 2011 resembles the scenery of the computer game, such as STALKER "Call of Pripyat"



The reactor is a prototype of a nuclear rocket engine. It heats hydrogen to extremely high temperatures and creates a jet thrust. In such an engine during the Khrushchev wanted to fly to Mars



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