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Nuclear technology has many important civilian applications. Kazakhastan’s astounding Atomic Lake is one example of just how useful that atom can be in building a better tomorrow.
Kazakhstan was a Soviet republic. It is here that the Soviet Union launched rockets to explore outer space and tested nuclear bombs to destroy our earth.
The Soviet Union’s nuclear test range was an archipelago of blast zones in western Semiapalatinsk. Between 1949 and 1989, around 700 bombs were tested, approximately 100 of which were above ground blasts. The blast zone in Semiapalatinsk is huge, and remains to this day radioactive.
But not all blasts in the Semiapalatinsk were to test weapons. On January 15, 1965, a nuclear device was exploded in the testing range in Semiapalatinsk called the Polygon, an 18,500 square km blast zone. The explosion was huge, and illicit immediate complaints from the US. But the explosion, the equivalent of 140 tons of TNT, was not to test how many capitalists Moscow can kill, but to create a lake.
The Soviet nuclear device was planted under the Chagan River, a waterway that seasonally dries out then refills. The huge blast murdered rock and soil and created a crater 100 meters deep and 408 meters wide. Just as planned, when the season changed and the Chagan River flowed, the crater filled with water to become Lake Chagan.
The Soviet government was proud of Lake Chagan. They made a film with a happy athletic looking man swimming across it, first in a carefree manner, then racing across it as if he was in competition with someone else. The government also stocked the Lake with fish and encouraged everyone to eat lots of the Lake's fish.
But, no one swims in Lake Chagan anymore. The fish are gone from there too, as are birds and any other animal. Lake Chagan is cannot be found there either, just t Atomic Lake.
The water in Atomic Lake is dangerously radioactive. Fish cannot survive in it. There are no wild animals or birds along its shore. The lake regularly emits a foul odor.
There is also growing evidence that the Lake’s water is seeping into the nearby Irtysh River, which flows into Siberia and into the Kara Sea, which then would flow into the Arctic Ocean.
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