Book cover E. L. Yakubovskya et al. Semipalatinsk Test Polygon

Area residents remained unaware of the ill effects of radiation until the very late 1980s, where, with Gorbachov s policy of glasnost, reports on the harmful effects appeared in the Semipalatinsk newspaper. This openness became a venue for discussion and also for revelations about the health problems of those exposed. 

Below I provide the observations of three Americans who recently who visited Ground Zero after testing stopped. The first is Professor James C. Warf, a well known U.S. physicist who was a Group Leader on the Manhattan project during the 1950s. He visited Kazakhstan in summer 1994 as part of a team sponsored by the United Methodist Church. He wrote  

In the afternoon, we drove a couple hours to the site of the very first Soviet nuclear test on August 29, 1949. The name Alamogordo kept rattling around in my head. It was at the hind end of nowhere not a house, not a tree, not an animal. We stopped a couple of miles before reaching the point, and the soil registered background level on my Geiger counter. 

This is a statement from Cynthia Werner, who co-authored the articles cited above. She is a professor of anthropology at Texas A and M University. (She refers to her research partner, Kathleen Purvis-Roberts.) 

Given the nature of our project, Katie and I felt that it was very important to visit Ground Zero where the first nuclear weapon was detonated in the Polygon. During the summer of 2003, our Kazakh partner, Nurlan helped us arrange a one-day trip to the site with several Kazakhstani scientists from the National Nuclear Center. We were told that it would be safe to visit the site for a short period of time (less than one hour). We were each given a protective mask and booties to wear on our feet. It took several hours to complete the drive 

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Fig. 101.7 Book cover E. L. Yakubovskya et al. Semipalatinsk Test Polygon (2003)...

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