Beyond the Nuclear Epicenter

This contribution describes configurations of knowledge and secrecy in scientific research into health effects of nuclear testing at Semipalatinsk. Studies on health effects did not just begin with the post‐Soviet era, but were conducted in the USSR from the late 1950s onwards as part of Cold War science and technology. In order to carve out the changing politics that have configured and reconfigured radiation science in the Semipalatinsk region, I focus on four sets of documents on the health effects of nuclear fallout. I examine their framings and practices from the first investigations of health effects during the Khrushchev era up to radiation epidemiology in post‐Soviet Kazakhstan. I argue that Cold War infrastructures and models continue to shape epidemiologists’ very devices and practices of knowledge production. Scientific data collecting and processing involved the lives and deaths of people living in this part of the Kazakhstan steppe in knowledge production. Despite the closure of the test site, knowledge infrastructures from Cold War nuclear science have remained active in radiation research

Epicenter · Seismology · History · Science, Research, and Medicine · Geology

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