Semipalatinsk nuclear test site – 20 years after the closure Not
so long ago Kazakhstan commemorated the 20th anniversary of
closure of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site. It is located on
the border of East Kazakhstan, Pavlodar and Karaganda oblasts,
about 130 km northwest of Semey city. The main attraction of the
area is “atomic” lake, which is located at the test site
“Balapan”. It was formed in the explosion of a thermonuclear
warhead of 140 kilotons of power in 1965. The diameter of the
lake is 500 meters; depth from the surface to the bottom is
about 80 meters. In a similar way the Soviet strategists planned
to build water reservoirs in arid regions of the Soviet Union.
Photos by Grigory Bedenko for voxpopuli.kz Unique video of the
experiment (unfortunately on Russian only). The shore of the
lake is contaminated by radiation so much that the level of
radiation is actually equivalent to radioactive waste. At this
point, the dosimeter shows 1 microsieverts per hour, 114 times
more than the normal level.