Forensics of Nuclear Landscape
We arrived at a gas station at the edge of the small town of Karkaralinsk in north-eastern Kazakhstan, as the sun was approaching its zenith. We stopped to stock up on extra fuel before the long journey to the Polygon, the former nuclear weapons testing zone officially known as Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site. This is my first ever trip as an atomic tourist. Tour guides Dmitriy and Vladimir pack up the last of
the fuel canisters in the back of an old Toyota Prado and we are ready to go. We pass by the sign warning to be mindful about the proximity to the Polygon of a list of prohibited industrial operations there without a permit. Looking at the drawing of the nuclear site boundary, I had not realised that it would be the last time I would see anything resembling a border.
Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site Kazakhstan andrey chernykh
from the top: View from the top of the crater into the vast steppe of the Polygon Wandering cows near the Field site Stopover at village Mrzhik
Andrey Chernykh
1 W e drive through the rolling planes of the Kazakh steppe. The landscape is boundless and stretches endlessly into the distance with fewer and fewer hills, fading away in the blue hues of the sky. After a while the paved road starts to narrow and eventually altogether disappears to make way for gravel and dirt. Relying solely on a satellite signal, Dmitriy navigated the map on his laptop with sharp precision. At Mrzhik, a village walking distance from the nuclear site’s border, an elderly Kazakh woman was drying her clothes outside. She was kind enough to let us use the well but felt reluctant to stay and chat longer. Mrzhik, a small village of around 500 people nestled in the middle of three hill ridges that stretch further south, is one of the villages narrowly missed by the radioactive fallout from the first surface nuclear tests in the early 1950s. After detonation, wind picked up the smoke and dust rising to form a mushroom cloud, and carried it for 100 km south, depositing radionuclides onto the plants and soil. One of the radionuclides is Plutonium 239 with a half- life of 24,110 years.
Despite this, the landscape looks tranquil and abundantly biodiverse. A light breeze was gently swaying the grasses in the little creek nearby; village geese waddled in to drink. As we pulled up the last bucket of water, Dmitriy mentioned,’Did you know that the Polygon is the only nuclear test site in the world where people live? Even here in this little village, they don’t know where exactly the testing site is. To this day I am still amazed that this is their reality’. He chuckled and grabbed a full water container to take to the car. The sun has already began to descend, the wind was slowing down and it was time to make camp in the middle of vast rolling hills of grass. There was no sound or animal in sight as we watched the sunset, chatting, drinking beer and eating traditional Russian camp food of dry smoked fish, hard-boiled eggs and cold cut sandwiches. The sun set, silence came and the night sky was peppered with millions of stars. In my tent, I thought of the Field and the Ground Zero. How contaminated is it? Will the radiation affect us in some way? The site accumulated such a negative stigma over the years that I couldn’t help but feel eerie about the possibility of some terrifying unknown that might await us tomorrow.
On Site review 35 : the material culture of architecture
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