Semipalatinsk and Northern Test Sites in the USSR: Integrated Program of Radiation and Ecological Studies of the Environmental Consequences of Nuclear Tests

The urgency of the problem of assessing the environmental impact of nuclear tests conducted in the southern and northern latitudes of our planet is obvious, and the RADTEST project offers a perspective for solving it by consolidating the efforts of international experts who have information about the specificity of nuclear tests conducted at concrete test sites and who are developing a methodology for studying and analyzing their aftereffects. Our intention of participating in this project is stimulated by the opportunity to use the results which are successively generated within the scope of the Targeted Comprehensive Program of Investigations (TCPI) of Seismic, Radiological and Sanitary-Ecological Situations in the Regions of the Semipalatinsk and Northern Tests Sites (“Region” Program). The leading TCPI implementor, the Radium Institute named after V. G. Khlopin, and about 20 different research establishments are facilitating its execution. The Reference Data Publication [Mikhailov et al., 1992] furnishes an excellent example of the cooperation of scientific teams within the Region-2 TCPI framework, aimed at providing a scientific support to current radiological studies related to the operations of the Northern Test Site (NTS); it also presents a scheme of a systematic approach to comprehensive studies of test-site environmental impacts (fig. 1) which takes into consideration the factors of medical geography and elements of various international programs under the auspices of SCOPE, WHO/FAO, and the UN.