Semipalatinsk Test Site - History

History

The site was selected in 1947 by Lavrentiy Beria, political head of the Soviet atomic bomb project (Beria falsely claimed the vast 18,000 km² steppe was "uninhabited"). Gulag labour was employed to build the primitive test facilities, including the laboratory complex in the northeast corner on the southern bank of the Irtysh River. The first Soviet bomb test, Operation First Lightning (nicknamed Joe One by the Americans) was conducted in 1949 from a tower at the Semipalatinsk Test Site, scattering fallout on nearby villages (which Beria had neglected to evacuate). The same area ("the experimental field", a region forty miles west of Kurchatov city) was used for more than 100 subsequent above-ground weapons tests.

Later tests were moved to the Chagan River complex and nearby Balapan in the east of the STS (including the site of the Chagan test, which formed Chagan Lake). Once atmospheric tests were banned, testing was transferred to underground locations at Chagan, Murzhik (in the west), and at the Degelen Mountain complex in the south, which is riddled with boreholes and drifts for both subcritical and supercritical tests. After the closure of the Semipalatinsk labour camp, construction duties were performed by the 217th Separate Engineering and Mining Battalion (who later built the Baikonur Cosmodrome). Between 1949 and the cessation of atomic testing in 1989, 456 explosions were conducted at the STS, including 340 underground (borehole and tunnel) shots and 116 atmospheric (either air-drop or tower shots). The lab complex, still the administrative and scientific centre of the STS, was renamed Kurchatov City after Igor Kurchatov, leader of the initial Soviet nuclear programme. The location of Kurchatov city has been typically shown on various maps as "Konechnaya" (the name of the train station; now Degelen) or "Moldary" (the name of the village that was later incorporated into the city).

The Semipalatinsk Complex was of acute interest to foreign governments during its operation, particularly during the phase when explosions were carried out above ground at the experimental field. Several U-2 overflights examined preparations and weapons effects, before being replaced with satellite reconnaissance. The US Defense Intelligence Agency is said to have been convinced that the Soviets had constructed an enormous beam weapon station at a small research station located on the testing site. This smaller research station, known to the Department of Defense as PNUTS (Possible Nuclear Underground Test Site) and the CIA as URDF-3 (Unidentified Research and Development Facility-3) was "studied" by remote viewers during project Stargate. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was discovered that the mysterious URDF-3 was tasked with researching nuclear powered spaceships similar to the US's Project Orion.

The site was officially closed on 29 August 1991.