Kazakhstan

KURCHATOV, Kazakhstan—In the remote steppe grasslands of Kazakhstan where, decades ago, Soviet military scientists detonated 456 nuclear bombs, ...

There is one small museum on the Institute of Radiation Safety and Ecology’s grounds, but it houses only a small number of artifacts left by the Russians. After weeks of emails, the Institute of Radiation Safety and Ecology granted an official invitation for an hour-and-a-half tour that carried the signatures of six top institute and NNC officials. Plutonium [one of the elements used in nuclear weapons] has a half-life of 24,000 years.” Kalmykov once dreamed of setting up a museum at the Polygon where visitors could learn about the perils of nuclear weapons. The government leases “clean lands” in the Polygon to various companies that mine coal, gold, and other minerals. The city is named after Soviet physicist Igor Kurchatov, who ran the nuclear tests there and is considered the father of the Soviet Union’s atomic bomb. But we also saw structures reduced to rubble as well as the bulldozers and cranes of looters, who were either unaware of or unbothered by the radiation. Securing the Polygon is largely the responsibility of three regional governments that consider the bombing territory as “reserve lands,” Aidarkhanov said. “I think it’s an issue of money, an issue of will, and an issue of trying to forget the past,” said Magdalena Stawkowski, assistant professor of cultural and medical anthropology at the University of South Carolina. Many of Kurchatov’s residents work for the Institute of Radiation Safety and Ecology or its parent organization, the National Nuclear Center (NNC), which oversees research on the Polygon, including its two nuclear reactors that are used for scientific research. Some people even believe the neglect arose from the government wanting to push away disturbing memories of a time when Kazakhstan was at the mercy of Moscow’s atomic whims. There are no checkpoints, no fences, and no signs warning that the 7,065-square-mile territory remains radioactive.