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  • NEWS FEATURE

The nuclear sins of the Soviet Union live on in Kazakhstan

Decades after weapons testing stopped, researchers are still struggling to decipher the health impacts of radiation exposure around Semipalatinsk.
  1. Wudan Yan

    1. Wudan Yan is a journalist in Seattle, Washington.

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Berik Syzdykov looks out of the kitchen window in his home in Semey, Kazakhstan.

Berik Syzdykov at his home in Semey, Kazakhstan. He was born with anomalies after his mother was exposed to radioactive fallout while pregnant. Credit: Phil Hatcher-Moore

The statues of Lenin are weathered and some are tagged with graffiti, but they still stand tall in the parks of Semey, a small industrial city tucked in the northeast steppe of Kazakhstan. All around the city, boxy Soviet-era cars and buses lurch past tall brick apartment buildings and cracked walkways, relics of a previous regime.

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Nature 568, 22-24 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01034-8

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