Where did nuclear explosions take place?
The Semipalatinsk nuclear test site is located in the northeast of Kazakhstan, south of Pavlodar. It was built in the late 1940s as part of the Soviet nuclear weapons program. Here on August 29, 1949, the first atomic bomb of the USSR was tested.
A total of 125 land and air nuclear explosions, including the first Soviet hydrogen bombs, had been carried out at the test site by 1989. When open-air tests were banned in 1963, they continued underground – it turned out to be convenient to place explosives in mines and galleries at the test site.
Taking into account the underground explosions, the total number of nuclear tests carried out near Semipalatinsk is more than 450.
The storage area exceeds 18 thousand square meters. km and its diameter is 100 km. At the same time, much of this area is unaffected by testing in clearly defined areas. The complex was officially closed in 1991, but in some places the radiation background is still above the norm. The territory of the former Semipalatinsk test site is not protected in any way and for a long time was not marked at all. People live there and animals graze, and tourists periodically visit the nuclear test site.
“Atomic” lakes
Now, as 60 years ago, most of the territory of the Semipalatinsk test site looks like an endless steppe. Without a guide, an unprepared person will not see anything interesting. Funnels appeared in explosions not high above the ground.
One of them can be seen on the site of a 30-meter tower with fixed RDS-1, the first Soviet atomic bomb. The tower itself was blasted off by an explosion, and in its place is a lake overgrown with reeds five meters in diameter. It looks like a natural reservoir and only a hydrologist can understand that such a reservoir is not suitable for such a landscape.
Other lakes at the nuclear test site are larger and unlike ordinary lakes. Its steep shores clearly indicate artificial or meteorite origin. One of them, the 100-meter TNT lake, has nothing to do with nuclear weapons directly.
In this place, the USSR simulated an atomic explosion with the help of 20 thousand tons of explosives as an experiment in 1963 – for this it took six months to bring TNT from all over the Union.
Lake Chagan (Atomic) is also similar to TNT – it was formed on January 15, 1965, when a 170 kiloton bomb was detonated underground at a depth of 170 meters. The reservoir is 430 meters wide and 100 meters deep. It turned out that the explosion was dirty and the water was dangerous for a long time, but these days, contrary to the ban, fishermen regularly come to the lake.
Ruins and museum
Explosions were not made in open space. It was necessary to place control and measuring equipment, observation points and command posts. In addition, settlements with real houses were built on the test sites, ditches were dug, bunkers were placed and military equipment was placed. This made it possible to evaluate the consequences of the explosion, and compared to the total budget of the nuclear program, it cost nothing to build a house, or even a whole city. These target buildings have hardly survived to this day.
But at the Semipalatinsk test site, you can see the remains of a large number of auxiliary buildings, mainly “ganders”.(watchtowers). They are easily recognizable by their characteristic features – on the opposite side of the epicenter, the tower is supported by powerful buttresses. (additional supports) so that the blast wave does not overturn them.
According to in “geese” story There is nothing interesting for travelers in 2017, because all equipment is either removed or looted. In general there are many ruins in the area and even the guides do not know the purpose of most of them. However, you can find the surviving resemblance of a subway station underground – it survived two low-power explosions in the immediate vicinity.
In the city of Kurchatov, located on the territory of the test site, there is a thematic museum. It includes what used to be found in bunkers and bunkers: test control panels, oscilloscopes, spectrometers, gamma radiation detectors, seismic sensors, film cameras and much more. Photographs of the tests, including the effects of the explosion on houses, bridges, military equipment and experimental animals, are displayed in the stands.
Increased radiation background
If the Semipalatinsk test site is therefore clean, the radiation background in the area of the test sites increases in places.
What is dangerous is not the radiation itself, which is not fatal in a short visit, but the dust and radioactive soil on clothing. It is therefore mandatory to wear several layers of protective clothing and overshoes when visiting the epicenter in the Experimental Area.
There you can also see many “kharitonchiki” – lumps of clumped earth that look like volcanic glass or frozen fuel oil spray. They are weakly radioactive and safe under reasonable storage conditions.
Areas of increased radioactivity are extremely unevenly distributed around the sites and therefore unaccompanied travel is not recommended. Separate parts of the landfill where tourists are not admitted will not be suitable for human life for thousands of years.
How to take
Kurchatov, which was previously closed, can now be freely visited by everyone. At the same time, escorts are required to visit test sites, independent trips to them are illegal.
The easiest way is to buy a ready-made tour – they are sold by agencies specializing in extreme tourism. The cost per person of a three-day tour starting from Astana is more than 150 thousand rubles, but the larger the group, the lower the cost of each. Alongside the museum and testing grounds, tourists are taken to the abandoned military town of Chagan. The military also participated in the tests, which ended there completely in connection with the closure of the test site on August 29, 1991.