The Semipalatinsk legacy and Kazakhstan’s nuclear disarmament
ASTANA. KAZINFORM A victim of nuclear testing during the Soviet era, Kazakhstan has been a staunch promoter of non-proliferation, and the removal and destruction of highly-enriched uranium. Over four decades, Soviet authorities conducted 456 nuclear tests at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in northern Kazakhstan, the total explosive power of which was equal to 2,500 atomic bombs of the type dropped on Hiroshima.
More than 1 million people were exposed to radioactive fallout during these atmospheric and underground tests, and vast tracts of land are now contaminated in Semipalatinsk and surrounding areas. Responding to the public outcry over Semipalatinsk, President Nazarbayev shut it down on August 29th 1991, shortly before Kazakhstan’s Independence was declared. Other major nuclear test sites in the world were closed thereafter - Nevada in the USA, Russia’s Novaya Zemlya, China’s Lop Nur, and Moruroa in French Polynesia.
In many ways, August 29th was a decisive moment in reducing the danger of a nuclear apocalypse, and was recognised as such when the 64th UN General Assembly in 2009 proclaimed this date the International Day Against Nuclear Tests. In May 1992, shortly after the closure of Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan renounced possession of nuclear weapons and began the arduous process of dismantling the nuclear arsenal it had inherited from the USSR. Encompassing more than 1,400 nuclear warheads and 110 ballistic missiles, it was the fourth largest stock of nuclear weapons in the world after those of Russia, the USA, and the Ukraine. This voluntary nuclear disarmament was not a consequence of Kazakhstan’s inability to maintain nuclear weapons. Kazakhstan had both the experts and necessary infrastructure to conduct military nuclear programs and could have joined the exclusive club of nuclear weapon states, should it have desired to do so.
But Kazakh President Nazarbayev did not venture down this path. The President’s conviction that security guarantees stem not from nuclear weapons but “from sustainable socio-economic development” partly explains this move, as does Kazakhstan’s determination to promote global security: “National interests in this most sensitive of areas”, President Nazarbayev has stated, “were put aside for the higher goal of international peace and security.” In few spheres was this principle more evident than in the process surrounding the removal and destruction of Kazakhstan’s weapons-grade nuclear material. Over ten years Kazakhstan, Russia, and the United States jointly secured the remnants of the Soviet nuclear program in Kazakhstan, beginning with “Project Sapphire” in 1994 which removed approximately 600 kilograms of highly enriched uranium from the Ulba Metallurgy Plant. More recently, in November 2010, Kazakhstan along with Russia, the USA, the UK, and the IAEA, removed spent nuclear fuel from the reactor BN-350 and safeguarded nuclear material equivalent to hundreds of nuclear bombs. In many ways, Kazakhstan’s renunciation of nuclear weapons served as testimony to the type of state Kazakhstan aspired to become – a responsible country whose security is guaranteed by prosperity, and a country whose contribution to global security far outweighs the modest size of its population. It was, to quote UN Secretary General Ban KI-Moon, “a true declaration of independence”, which not only has served Kazakhstan well but inspired others to do the same.
Source: www.kazakhembus.com