nuclear-news

Kazakhstan has paid a high price for hosting nuclear weapons

Why Kazakhstan Is Front and Center at the Global Nuclear Security Summit THE HUFFINGTON POST, Al Eisele, 11 April 2010, “………..The radioactive fallout from all the above ground and atmospheric tests left Mrs. Koloskova with health problems and occasional nightmares. “I don’t know what happened with me, but from that moment, I felt headaches and nervous disorders, and I imagined it many times,” she said.

But she was one of the lucky ones. Still vigorous and able to walk with aid of a cane, she was not afflicted with any of the horrific tumors or the radiation-caused genetic mutilations and birth defects that affected many residents of Semey and other settlements near the 7,000-square-mile test site known as the Polygon, Russian for “firing range.”

Her story, and those of thousands of others like her, is the reason why Kazakhstan, a Central Asia country unknown to most Americans, is standing front and center among the 47 nations represented at the two-day Global Nuclear Security Summit beginning Monday in Washington…….

[Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev]  was the first foreign leader to renounce the possession and use of nuclear weapons. Al Eisele: Why Kazakhstan Is Front and Center at the Global Nuclear Security Summit

April 13, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Kazakhstan, politics international | antinuclear, enriched, nuclear, nuclear secrecy, nuclear weapons, radiation, radioactive, uranium