“Let’s be a lesson”, Kazakhs wary of return to nuclear tests

KAZAKHSTAN:

As Russia warns of a growing risk of nuclear war and relations with the United States plunge into a deep freeze, communities near a massive Soviet-era nuclear test site in northern Kazakhstan have a message for leaders: “Let us be a lesson. “

Hundreds of tests were conducted between 1949 and 1989 on the barren steppe near the city of Semey, formerly known as Semipalatinsk, near the Kazakhstan-Russia border. The effect of the radiation had a devastating effect on the environment and the health of the local people and continues to affect lives there today.

Many nuclear proliferation experts believe that a resumption of testing by any nuclear superpower more than 30 years after the last test is unlikely anytime soon.

But tensions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have led to increasingly hostile rhetoric, and the arms control architecture built after the collapse of the Soviet Union more than three decades ago has begun to fail.

In early November, President Vladimir Putin revoked Russia’s ratification of the 1996 global treaty banning nuclear weapons tests. Moscow says it will not lead to a resumption of testing unless the United States does so first.

“Let our suffering be a lesson for others,” said Serikbai Imbyrai, a local leader in the village of Sarizal, who saw tests about 20 kilometers (12 miles) away when he was a boy. “If this (testing) continues, humanity will disappear.”

When the devices were detonated above ground – until 1963 when tests went underground – authorities ordered locals out of homes and schools because of fears that ground vibrations could cause buildings to collapse.

“I remember being about five years old,” said Baglan Gabullin, a resident of Kaynar, another village that lived under the shadow of the nuclear tests.

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He recalled how adults instructed him and his friends not to look in the direction of the explosion.

“We were small, so instead, out of curiosity we looked. The flash was yellow at first and then the black mushroom grew,” he said.

Kazakh authorities estimate that up to 1.5 million people were exposed to residual radioactive effects from the tests. More than 1 million received certificates confirming their status as test victims, making them eligible for a monthly payment of 18,000-tenge ($40).

“Everybody started dying”

Maira Abenova, an activist from the Semey region who founded a non-governmental organization protecting the rights of nuclear test victims after losing most of her family to what she said were related illnesses, urged politicians not to allow nuclear escalation.

“As someone who has lived with the consequences of what you might call 40 years of nuclear war, I think we can tell the world what we’ve been through,” he said.

There is little reliable data on the specific health effects of testing in Kazakhstan.

But scientists say exposure to radioactive material in the ground, breathing in radioactive particles in the air and ingesting contaminated food, including from local animals, have contributed to an increased risk of cancer and cases of birth defects.