Kazakh nuclear woes remain a decade after closure
Date: 30-Aug-01
Country: KAZAKHSTAN
Author: Sebastian Alison
Speaking at the launch of his new book, "The epicentre of the world", President Nursultan Nazarbayev told an audience including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that the site's closure had met fierce resistance from the Soviet leadership and the army.
But he defended his 1991 decision, taken while the Soviet Union still existed, to close the test centre opened in 1949.
"For nearly 40 years Kazakhstan found itself at the epicentre of global confrontation, and even in peacetime this caused incalculable losses," he said.
"Kazakhstan was the only country in the world where an inhumane totalitarian regime carried out experiments without regard for the ecology or the health of the population, even though these problems were known about."
He said 456 nuclear explosions, more than half of them above ground, were carried out in the Semipalatinsk region of northeastern Kazakhstan.
As a result a huge number of genetic disorders have been noted in the local population which are expected to take several generations to disappear.
The country was also home to well over 1,000 nuclear warheads, which Nazarbayev got rid of after Kazakhstan became an independent state.
The Soviet Union also had a testing ground at Novaya Zemlya Island off its Arctic coast.
Robert Sagdeyev, director of the centre for space research at Kazakhstan's East-West Institute, told the meeting the consequences of the "nuclear madness" were still visible now.
"Recently we have discovered rather strange anomalies in the temperature in this (Semipalatinsk) region. The temperature is about 10 degrees higher than expected. We first noticed this in 1997, but now this has become a permanent phenomenon."
Nazarbayev hoped Kazakhstan's nuclear-free status would enable the country to "make a present of the planet" to future generations.
"'I don't know what weapons will be used in the third world war, but the fourth will be fought with sticks and stones,' said Albert Einstein in his time. If that prophecy is not to come true, that's because mankind has become a little wiser."