The Semipalatinsk Test Site or Semipalatinsk-21 (Russian: Семипалатинск-21; Kazakh: Семей-21, romanized: Semei-21), also known as "The Polygon", was the primary testing venue for the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons. It is located in Zhanasemey District, Abai Region, Kazakhstan, south of the valley of the Irtysh River. The test site was part of the former Kazakh SSR. 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. Most of the nuclear tests took place at various sites further to the west and the south, some as far as into Karagandy Region. 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. 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. According to estimates from Kazakh experts, 1.5 million people were exposed to fallout over the years. From 1996 to 2012, a secret joint operation of Kazakh, Russian, and American nuclear scientists and engineers secured some waste plutonium in the tunnels of the mountains. The Semipalatinsk Test Site saw the detonation of the first Soviet atom bomb and the first air-tested hydrogen bomb. Over the course of 40 years, a quarter of all nuclear tests in history took place here. 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.
History
The site was selected in 1947 by Lavrentiy Beria, political head of the Soviet atomic bomb project. Beria claimed the vast 18,000 km² steppe was "uninhabited". 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. The first Soviet bomb test, Operation First Lightning, was conducted in 1949 from a tower at the Semipalatinsk Test Site, scattering fallout on nearby villages. 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. Later tests were moved to the Balapan complex by the Chagan River in the southeast of the Semipalatinsk Polygon, including the site of the Chagan test, which formed Chagan Lake. Once atmospheric tests were banned, testing was transferred to underground locations at Saryozen, 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. 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. Between 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. 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. 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 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. Several U-2 overflights examined preparations and weapons effects, before being replaced with satellite reconnaissance. The US Defense Intelligence Agency who were spying on Soviet Union, believed that the Soviets established an enormous beam weapon station at a small research station located on the testing site. This smaller research station, known to the Department of Defense as PNUTS (Possible Nuclear Underground Test Site) and to the CIA as URDF-3 (Unidentified Research and Development Facility-3) was of great interest to American intelligence agencies. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was discovered that the mysterious URDF-3 was tasked with researching a nuclear thermal rocket similar to the US's NERVA.
Closure of the test site Information about the test site was first made public during the Glasnost era. Before this, even the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan had neither access to the site nor any authority over its operations. According to Nazarbayev, then Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Kazakh SSR, a few months after the Chernobyl disaster, Moscow sent an order to expand the territory of the Semipalatinsk site into the Taldy-Kurgan Region. Nazarbayev refused to sign the document, summoning Taldy-Kurgan’s regional executive committee chair, Seilbek Shaumakhanov, to Alma-Ata and instructing him to spread the word about the expansion plan and to hold a protest rally with an “unexpectedly assembled” public. A significant role was also played by Keshirim Boztaev, the First Secretary of the Semipalatinsk Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, who, with the approval of the republican leadership, sent a telegram on February 20, 1989, to the CPSU Central Committee, addressed to M. S. Gorbachev, requesting that “relevant ministries and agencies be instructed to temporarily suspend or drastically reduce the frequency and power of explosions and, in the future, move nuclear testing to another, more acceptable location.” Meanwhile, the KGB reported to Moscow that protest sentiments were intensifying and warned of a possible repeat of the December 1986 events in Alma-Ata, but on a republic-wide scale. Ultimately, the decision was made to abandon the site expansion plan. On May 30, 1989, Nazarbayev addressed the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union:
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