Local oncology centers are screening tens of thousands of patients, trying to detect and treat tumors at early stages. People living in the area are still predisposed to breast and pulmonary cancer.

We are getting more and more disabled infants, each passing day their number increases. Environmental factors work slowly – we can see their effects in 10 or 20 years, in the first, second, third or fourth generation.”

VIDEO Kazakhstan’s Nuclear Legacy Euro News, 14/04/10 http://www.euronews.com/2010/04/14/kazakhstan-s-nuclear-legacy/  At the elderly care home in Semipalatinsk, we met 85 year old Praskovya. Semipalatinsk, or Semey, is a city 150 kilometers from the main Soviet nuclear weapons test site.

Praskovya is a former warehouse manager who used to work in a small town bordering the restricted area in the 1950s. She witnessed one of the nuclear explosions: “We were curious, so we went outside to watch. When the explosion happened, it looked like a large bowl, with black smoke and flames coming from the bowl. Then it rolled into a ball, and
a smoke column went up, and at the top, the mushroom appeared. And then the soldiers came and made us leave the street, shouting “it’s not allowed, it’s not allowed”. But we already saw everything interesting. And then everyone got health problems. I’ve had headaches
all my life.”

After a wave of popular protests, the Semipalatinsk site was closed in
1991. It had carried out 456 secret nuclear tests.

President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, took the decision to
close down the facility: “Even senior leaders of Kazakhstan were not
allowed to know about the ongoing tests until 1990, until Gorbachev’s
glasnost and the opportunity to speak. And as a result of demands from
the people, who already knew and understood the complexity and gravity
of the issues, I took the only right decision – despite difficulties
at the time. The military-industrial complex of the Soviet Union was
against it and the Soviet leadership was also against it.”
However, the closure could not reverse the environmental damage to the
region, which has more than a million inhabitants, most of which are
villagers. Radioactive fallout from nuclear blasts have given Semey and neighboring villages abnormally high rates of cancer and birth defects.

Local oncology centers are screening tens of thousands of patients, trying to detect and treat tumors at early stages. People living in the area are still predisposed to breast and pulmonary cancer.

Tleugaysha Makenova suffers from breast cancer: “I live in a district
close to the test zone. Last year I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
I had to have an operation and radiation therapy. I didn’t see any
explosions myself, but my parents talked about the effects of the
blasts on the people. My husband got cancer too – he’s already dead.”

Scientists stress that there is not enough research to link each
individual case to radiation. However, it is clear that the nuclear
legacy keeps haunting younger generations. Infant mortality here is
five times higher than the average for developed countries. Embryonic
defects are widespread, and cancer strikes teenagers as well as
adults.

Natalya Karnakova is head of the Radiology Department at Semey
Oncological Hospital: “We have patients who are fifteen or eighteen,
even younger – but, unfortunately, they die very quickly. Their
parents lived in the regions close to the site. And, of course, the
parents are very upset that they didn’t get sick, but their children
did.”

Dozens of little children abandoned by their parents live in the local
orphanage. A fifth of them are mentally or physically disabled. These
conditions have become increasingly frequent in the last few years.

Symbat Abdikarimova is a neuropathologist at Semey Baby Home: “We are
getting more and more disabled infants, each passing day their number
increases. Environmental factors work slowly – we can see their
effects in 10 or 20 years, in the first, second, third or fourth
generation.”

Innocent victims of atomic weapons keep suffering twenty years after
the last explosion – a terrible legacy of the ruthless past.

 “Japan hasn’t used the Fukushima disaster as an opportunity to push for renewable energy or energy efficiency,”   “Instead, it has used the time since the disaster to push for the restart of nuclear reactors.”

How Long Will Japan’s Nuclear Recess Be? Enter KazakhstanTruth Out , 15 May 2012  By Steve Horn,    ”……Japan Announces Big Nuclear Deal with Kazakhstan Unmentioned by all but two news outlets was the fact that a day before the announcement, the Japanese government signed a deal with Kazakhstan’s state-owned nuclear giant, KazAtomProm, to begin supplying Japan with more nuclear fuel starting in 2013.

“Japan will take part in the implementation of 40 projects in Kazakhstan,” explained the Kazakh state-run news outlet, CaspioNet. “This applies to cooperation in the nuclear industry, mining and met allurgical complex, high technology, as well as mechanical engineering and gas-chemical industry.”

As for “projects” in Japan itself, the picture is a little murky, perhaps intentionally so. “The Japanese government never actually said it was going to turn off the lights on the nuclear industry at any point in time,” the Netherlands-based Nuclear Campaigner forGreenpeace International, Aslihan Tumer told WhoWhatWhy in an interview…….

A complex web of agreements across national borders links many of the biggest players in the nuclear industry. For example, in October 2006, the Japanese multinational corporation Toshiba purchased a 77-percent share of the U.S. nuclear company Westinghouse Electric for $5.4 billion. Two other companies were involved in the deal: Japan’s IHI Corporation, and U.S. multinational Shaw Group. Later, in July 2007, KazAtomProm paid $486.3 million for 10 percent of Toshiba’s stake in the jointly owned corporation, meaning it now owns 7.7-percent of the corporation formerly known as Westinghouse.

As a result of such deals Kazakhstan has a direct tie to the Fukushima meltdown. Investigative reporter Greg Palast explained in a March 2011 story: “One of the reactors dancing with death at Fukushima Station 1 was built by Toshiba. Toshiba was also an architect of the emergency diesel system.”

Eerily enough, Kazakhstan is still recovering from a nuclear tragedy of its own. The city of Semey, near the country’s northeastern border with Siberia, was formerly known asSemipalatinsk. From 1949 to 1989, a secret complex 93 miles west of the city was the site of the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons tests.

History Repeating Itself?

“After a wave of popular protests, the Semipalatinsk site was closed in 1991. It had carried out 456 secret nuclear tests,” explained EuroNews. “However, the closure could not reverse the environmental damage to the region, which has more than a million inhabitants, most of which are villagers.”

“Local oncology centers are screening tens of thousands of patients, trying to detect and treat tumors at early stages…Infant mortality here is five times higher than the average or developed countries. Embryonic defects are widespread, and cancer strikes teenagers as well as adults,” the report continues.

The nuclear tragedies at Chernobyl, Semipalatinsk and Fukushima have not proved a deterrent to the global nuclear industry’s ambitions. “Japan hasn’t used the Fukushima disaster as an opportunity to push for renewable energy or energy efficiency,” said Tumer. “Instead, it has used the time since the disaster to push for the restart of nuclear reactors.” http://truth-out.org/news/item/9145-how-long-will-japans-nuclear-recess-be-enter-kazakhstan

The supply contracts with Japan haven’t changed, Chief Executive Officer Vladimir Shkolnik told reporters in Almaty, Kazakhstan, today without identifying the buyers…..
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-24/japan-to-purchase-contracted-kazakh-uranium-kazatomprom-says.html

Perhaps because its people understand firsthand the horrors of living with the effects of nuclear testing, Kazakhstan has fully supported efforts to ban nuclear testing and nuclear weaponry, and has given up its nuclear arsenal. 

Politics Clouds Efforts to Ban Nuclear Testing, By Elizabeth Whitman, UNITED NATIONS, Sep 5, 2011 (IPS) – On Aug. 29, 1949, the Soviet Union conducted the first of 456 nuclear tests in Semipalatinsk in Eastern Kazakhstan, at the site where it ultimately held over two-thirds of all Soviet nuclear tests without warning inhabitants of the region of the impact of exposure to these tests.On Aug. 29, 1991 the site closed, yet the devastating health and environmental effects continue to plague the region to this day.

With last week marking the 20th anniversary closure of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site and the second International Day Against Nuclear Tests, world leaders and U.N. officials gathered to discuss the issue of nuclear testing.They convened in a high level workshop on Thursday and an informal meeting of the General Assembly on Friday.

In the wide array of views and concepts presented in these gatherings, however, consensus seemed clear on only one point: the fact that efforts to ban nuclear testing and indeed, to entirely eliminate nuclear weapons around the world, are clouded with political overtones and motives.

Meanwhile, states with nuclear weapons continue to depend upon those capabilities for strength and influence in areas of international security and relations, and politics overshadow the fact that nuclear testing poses serious hazards to human and environmental health and nuclear weapons have the ability to destroy the planet. …….
Perhaps because its people understand firsthand the horrors of living with the effects of nuclear testing, Kazakhstan has fully supported efforts to ban nuclear testing and nuclear weaponry, and has given up its nuclear arsenal. …..
Politics Clouds Efforts to Ban Nuclear Testing – IPS ipsnews.net

As for the locals, they were little more than guinea pigs…. it is so hard to prove the link between nuclear fallout and the diseases that may strike afterwards.According to Dr. Marat Sandybaev, head of the local oncology centre, cancer rates in the area are still twice as high as the national average, and it is estimated that birth defects are up to 10 times higher.

Bringing life to a nuclear wasteland Can a nuclear test site be reclaimed? The Soviets detonated hundreds of bombs in Kazakhstan, poisoning the land and people. Louise Gray of the Telegraph travels to the notorious Polygon site and reports on plans to restore the region By Louise Gray, The Telegraph September 4, 2011 “…. Between 1949 and 1989, the Soviet Union detonated more than 456 nuclear devices on the Semipalatinsk test site, better known as the “Polygon.”

This region of the Kazakh steppe, covering an area the size of Belgium, was the primary testing ground for the most sophisticated atomic weapons in the Soviet arsenal. Some 116 were exploded above ground, producing the “beautiful” mushroom clouds that witnesses remember; the rest were let off underground, protecting the atmosphere but leaching more poison into the earth.

As for the locals, they were little more than guinea pigs. In the state home for the elderly in Semipalatinsk – which has been renamed Semey since Kazakhstan independence in 1991 – old women gather to tell their stories. They too have injuries and illnesses, though only Makysh receives compensation, because it is so hard to prove the link between nuclear fallout and the diseases that may strike afterwards.

According to Dr. Marat Sandybaev, head of the local oncology centre, cancer rates in the area are still twice as high as the national average, and it is estimated that birth defects are up to 10 times higher.

What is unique about the Polygon, however, is not its past, but its present. While other testing sites around the world have been abandoned, the Kazakhs are attempting to detoxify the area. The National Nuclear Centre of the Republic of Kazakhstan (NNC) wants to open parts of the site for commercial exploitation within a year, and the whole mineral-rich area within a decade, except for “highly contaminated spots.” Decontamination would be carried out simply by scraping off the top five centimetres of soil – although that does leave the question of where to dump it…….

the Geiger counter is racing and so is my heart. My stomach is churning as radioactive dust rises, even though we are wearing gas masks and protective covers on our feet

The Soviets filled the area with apartments, bridges and roads, to resemble a town. Now, all that is left are burned lumps of concrete. The “biological objects” that were tied to posts, such as horses, cows and pigs (“because they have skin like humans”), are long gone. Our guides, dressed in camouflage gear and disarmingly casual, pick up rocks of melted soil wearing just surgical gloves. The Geiger counter is reading three microsieverts per hour, which is considerably more than you might expect of natural background radiation….

Bringing life to a nuclear wasteland

Heavily contaminated areas of the Semipalatinsk nuclear site are closed to access by Kazaks who used the land for farming and grazing. The government, with the United States, is working to keep dangerous materials out of sinister hands, said Erlan Idrissov, Kazakhstan’s ambassador to the United States.

“All those years we have been trying to make a full assessment of the dangers that were brought to the land by nuclear testing,” he said Thursday. drissov spoke before joining a panel discussion at the Atomic Testing Museum to mark the 20th anniversary of the closure of the Semipalatinsk nuclear site.”The government’s task is to completely rehabilitate the area from the human health point of view and nature, the environmental health point of view,” he said……

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union conducted 715 nuclear tests that involved detonating 969 nuclear devices.

The United States conducted 1,054 nuclear tests, including 24 that were conducted with the United Kingdom. Most, 904, were conducted at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, which is now called the Nevada National Security Site. These included 100 detonated in the atmosphere and 804 underground. Some involved more than one device.

Soviet nuclear legacy surfaces at atomic museum – News – ReviewJournal.com

City that suffered most calls for an end to nuclear testing, Telegraph, By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent, Semipalatinsk, 29 Aug 2011

Between 1949 and 1989 this area of eastern Kazakhstan was used by the former Soviet Union to test 456 nuclear bombs. The local population was not told about the risks to their lives – or indeed the health of their grandchildren.

In the state home for the elderly old women recall the “beautiful” mushroom clouds.

Makysh Iskakova was just 19 when she saw a bright ball in the sky “the size of a yurt”, then a smell “like burning hair”. The 78-year-old in dark glasses says she only saw the nuclear bomb three times and then she was blinded for life.

Sitting beside her Nina Kolesnikova, 83, is covered in Soviet medals. She went out in bare feet to see the blast. “I felt the wave of the explosion and fell to the floor.” She says she has been crippled ever since.

In Semey state Children’s Home Dina Batyrova snuffles and squeaks as she tries to breathe. Her head is twice the size of a normal child’s, swollen with water on the brain or hydrocephalus.

Next door other abandoned children with Down’s syndrome or other genetic defects play or sit listlessly in push chairs……

The trouble with the long term effects of nuclear fallout is it is difficult to prove a direct link with illness, says Dr Kazbek Abasalikov, the Director of the Institute of Radiation Medicine in Semey, meaning the affected of Chernobyl, Fukishima and Semey continue to live in fear.

He hopes to publish research within a year in an international peer-reviewed journal that shows once and for all the link between radiation and illness. The institute is also advising the Japanese over Fukishima.

In his opinion there is a link, the question is at what dosage does it become dangerous?

“The disease caused by radiation could skip a generation,” he adds.

Akmaral Musakhanova, Head of Research at the Semey University Medical Centre, is sure there is a link. She shows us monstrous pickled foetuses, including a ‘Cyclops baby’ with one eye and Siamese twins, collected from around Semey since 1953. She says that the rate of deformities is “at least” twice the normal rate.

Dr Marat Sandybaev, head of the local oncology centre, says cancer rates in the area are almost twice the national average.

He said there is “consensus” in the medical community about the link between] radiation and cancer.

“The wind blew soil to different places so they could be found all over the area and the half-life of some these materials is hundreds of years so yes, we could we will still continue to see the effects of the testing,” he says……

Kazakhstan’s Uranium Industry Could Lose Its Luster, By. John Daily,  OilPrice.com, 18 June 11-- What a difference a year and a tsunami make!

Western investors have been salivating over the post-Soviet space’s energy riches since the 1991 collapse of communism. While focusing on the Caspian’s hydrocarbon reserves other mineralogical riches awaited development as well, none more so than Kazakhstan’s vast uranium deposits.  Given an investor-friendly government in Astana, the country’s uranium deposits seemed to be the Next Big Thing, an attitude encouraged by the government of President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Kazakhstan contains the world’s second-largest uranium reserves, estimated at 1.5 million tons. Until 2009 Kazakhstan was the world’s No. 3 uranium miner, exceeded only by Australia and Canada; the three countries account for more than half of global uranium production.

And that news may be coming from the United States, birthplace of the nuclear era and currently home to 104 NPPs. On 7 June, a fire at Nebraska’s Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant knocked out the cooling process for spent nuclear fuel rods for 90 minutes. The NPP, adjacent to the still-flooding Missouri River, is close to the capital Omaha and has been closed since April for refueling. According to local NBC affiliate WOWT, “The Ft. Calhoun Nuclear Facility is an island right now but it is one that authorities say is going to stay dry. They say they have a number of redundant features to protect the facility from flood waters that include the aqua dam, earthen berms and sandbags.” A spokesman for Omaha Public Power District says the plant is at a “notification of unusual event” classification because of the flooding.

In an era of globalization, Ol’ Man River may drown Kazakhstan’s hopes for its uranium mining industry, as another nuclear debacle in the U.S. following in the wake 1979’s Three Mile Island accident will undoubtedly prove too much, even for Madison Ave.’s PR spin doctors. No NPPS have been built in the U.S. since Three Mile Island and should bad things happen at Ft. Calhoun, where the Missouri’s water’s are still rising, the global market for uranium fuel for NPPs worldwide is going to crater, beginning with the U.S.

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Kazakhstans-Uranium-Industry-Could-Lose-Its-Luster.html

In the largest such operation ever mounted, U.S. and Kazakh officials transferred 11 tons of highly enriched uranium and 3 tons of plutonium some 1,890 miles by rail and road across the Central Asian country………….

U.S., Kazakhstan complete secret transfer of nuclear materials, KansasCity.com,  By JONATHAN S. LANDAY, McClatchy Newspapers, 18 Nov 10, WASHINGTON – Working under extraordinary secrecy, the U.S. and Kazakh governments in the past year have moved nuclear material that could have been used to make more than 770 bombs from a location feared vulnerable to terrorist attack to a new high-security facility.

In the largest such operation ever mounted, U.S. and Kazakh officials transferred 11 tons of highly enriched uranium and 3 tons of plutonium some 1,890 miles by rail and road across the Central Asian country………….

The sparsely populated region where the storage facility is also is home to the defunct Semipalatinsk Test Site, a 7,000-square-mile expanse of steppe where the Soviet Union conducted more than 460 nuclear test explosions from 1949 to 1990 while Kazakhstan was a Soviet republic.

“The project is a very significant technical achievement,” D’Agostino said in an interview Nov. 8 that McClatchy Newspapers agreed to embargo until the operation was completed. “This isn’t stuff you just put on a truck and drive across a country.”

The United States spent $219 million on the project. Britain kicked in $4 million and Kazakhstan also contributed some funding, U.S. officials said.

“The cost is very, very small compared to the cost of the wrong people getting their hands” on the material, said a U.S. official who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the project publicly……………

The U.S. officials declined to elaborate on the threat, citing classified intelligence.

Aktau, however, sits directly across the Caspian Sea from Russia’s Northern Caucasus region, where al-Qaida-linked Islamic separatists are engaged in insurgencies in the republics of Dagestan and Chechnya.

Iran, which Western officials accuse of pursuing a clandestine nuclear-weapons program, also has a Caspian Sea coast. Tehran denies that it is seeking nuclear arms……….

Until Kazakhstan, the largest transfer operation returned nearly 1,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium – enough for 18 bombs – to Russia from Poland, a project that was completed in September…..

U.S., Kazakhstan complete secret transfer of nuclear materials – KansasCity.com