Atomic Steppe News Today

A recent speech by Kazakhstan’s president outlines the growing importance of trans-national water and electricity generation issues; and nuclear energy is increasingly being floated as a potential solution.

Crew from destroyed Challenger 2 Tank survived...

In this week’s edition: Uzbek President’s daughter takes senior post, Central Asia pays more attention to water, Kazakhstan’s nuclear power plant plans, and more.

Kazakh officials are moving forward with plans to build the country’s first nuclear power plant, although unsurprisingly, there is public opposition. On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb over an area in northeastern Kazakhstan. Over the next 40 years, there were 455 more tests in the same area and the effects of the radiation continue to cause suffering today. Joining host Bruce Pannier to talk about Kazakhstan’s nuclear legacy is Togzhan Kassenova, author of t...

In the past two months, a diplomatic offensive involving high-profile visits has highlighted Kazakhstan as the nexus of Eurasian diplomacy and strengthened nuclear cooperation between the United States and Kazakhstan, writes Dr. Stephen J. Blank, senior fellow at FPRI’s Eurasia Programme. But today’s successes have deep roots: Kazakhstan’s then-president Nursultan Nazarbayev’s three-decades-old decision to dismantle […]

While the risks of nuclear escalation and proliferation have re-emerged, Kazakhstan’s decision to dismantle its nuclear arsenal thirty years ago offers a valuable case study in denuclearization.

Togzhan Kassenova's book, Atomic Steppe, was 15 years in the making and published at a time when the risks of a nuclear confrontation are at their highest in some 60 years.

During its time as a Soviet republic within the USSR, Kazakhstan was the site of massive nuclear tests, both above and below ground. The cost to the environment and health of the Kazakh people and livestock was likewise massive, though the full scale of the effects was understudied and suppressed for decades. Through massive public protests in the 1980s, nuclear-weapons testing in the Semipalatinsk region of Kazakhstan was brought to a halt.

The secret military exercises would alter the country’s fate—and lands.

The secret military exercises would alter the country’s fate—and lands.