ANNIVERSARY OF DECISION TO STOP NUCLEAR TEST AT THE SEMIPALATINSK NUCLEAR POLYGON
Astana, June 17th: Over 25,000 locals, Kazakh dignitaries and the world’s media will assemble on Thursday, June 18th at Semipalatinsk to hear President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan celebrate the 20th anniversary of Kazakhstan’s decision to stop nuclear tests at the Semipalatinsk Test Site (STS).
In his speech, President Nazarbayev will address the origins of the anti-nuclear movement in Kazakhstan. He will speak about the selflessness, fearlessness and enthusiasm of millions of Kazakhs to end what he describes as “a crime against life.”
The total power of nuclear charges in the atmosphere and on the surface of the STS was 2,500 times more than that of the power released by the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The accumulation of radioactive material in the region exceeded that released by the Chernobyl accident in 1986. In all, 456 nuclear tests were carried out on the Site, the last being carried on October 19, 1989.
The almost irreparable environmental damage has also played havoc with the health of the local population (high rates of cancer, childhood leukemia, impotence and birth defects). The total number of Kazakhs subjected to the effects of radiation is thought to be more than million people and the effects of residual radiation remains unpredictable. To restore the disrupted environment and ecology to its original state will take more than 300 years. President Nazarbayev has already expressed the need for the creation of a cluster of radiological medical treatment centers to diagnose and treat oncologic diseases and other maladies caused by radiation.
“Our country has the absolute historical and moral right to be recognized as one of the leaders of the world anti-nuclear movement”, says President Nazarbayev - who also expresses hope that Kazakhstan’s experience of creating a nuclear weapon-free zone in Central Asia, will influence other parts of the world to do likewise. Questions of international security will become one of the top priorities of the forthcoming OSCE chairmanship of Kazakhstan.
The special role of the President in making the decision to close the Semipalatinsk site and rid the country of nuclear weapons forever will be underlined in speeches on Thursday (Mr Nazarbayev was entirely behind the grassroots movement from the very moment Kazakhstan declared its independence in 1991).
However, few other countries have followed Kazakhstan’s example, and potential nuclear calamity continues to threaten mankind. “Governments, parliaments, political parties, public and non-government organizations all over the world must address this situation” says a joint communiqué issued by participants in Thursday’s event: “To all those who are concerned about the fate of our planet, and those who feel a responsibility to future generations… We appeal to everyone to join the global movement on non-proliferation and destroy nuclear weapons. Only by joint efforts can we keep the world from nuclear insanity. We – in Kazakhstan - want a safe world for all children everywhere!”
The denuclearized zone in Central Asia has a number of unique features…
1. Kazakhstan once had the fourth largest nuclear arsenal in the world.
2. The denuclearized zone was the first to be created in the Northern Hemisphere.
3. The Nuclear Non-ProliferationTreaty was the first multilateral security agreement to bring together all five Central Asian countries.
Finally, for the first time ever, a denuclearized zone has been created in a region that borders two nuclear states (Russia and China).
The Semipalatinsk Test Site was the primary testing venue for the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons. It is located on the steppe in northeast Kazakhstan (then the Kazakh SSR). The scientific buildings for the test site were located around 150 km west of the town of Semipalatinsk (later renamed Semey), near the border of East Kazakhstan Province and Pavlodar Province with most of the nuclear tests took place at various sites further to the west and south. The site was selected in 1947 by Lavrentiy Beria, political head of the Soviet atomic bomb project.
The first Soviet test- Operation First Lightning - was conducted in 1949 from a tower at STS, scattering fallout on nearby villages. The same area ("the experimental field", a region forty miles west of Kurchatov city) was used for more than 100 subsequent above-ground weapons tests.
Later tests were moved to the Chagan River complex and nearby Balapan in the east. Once atmospheric tests were banned, testing was transferred to underground locations at Chagan, Murzhik (in the west), and at the Degelen Mountain range in the south, which is riddled with boreholes and drifts for both subcritical and supercritical tests. The site was officially closed on August 29, 1991.
Semipalatinsk was the site that Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan chose for the signing of the Central Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone on September 8, 2006. Kazakhstan has since joined all major international instruments of nonproliferation.
Today, Semipalatinsk hosts two of Kazakhstan's four nuclear reactors...
The IGR complex hosts one 50 megawatt graphite moderated reactor and the Baykal-1 complex - a 60 megawatt water moderated reactor.
The laboratory complexes also contain two cyclotron laboratories and two particle accelerators.
