Semipalatinsk Test Site: The Polygon Where the Soviet Union Tested Its Bombs
On the steppe of eastern Kazakhstan the Soviet Union fired its first atomic bomb in 1949 and went on to test more than 450 nuclear devices over 40 years, in an area chosen because Lavrentiy Beria called it uninhabited. It was closed in 1991, and a 17-year operation was needed to secure the plutonium left behind.