Land and Informational Approach to the Technological Security of Nuclear Testing Site Economic Use

Abstract

As of today, nuclear tests are prohibited by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) that was adopted by the 50th session of the UN General Assembly in 1996. However, in the more than 50 years of nuclear testing, more than 2000 nuclear explosions have been carried out on nuclear test sites. Nuclear tests have caused irreversible damage to the local environment, in particular to the nuclear test sites themselves. Most of them have been shut down and have not been used for a long time. Today there have been attempts to use radiation polluted lands for economic purposes. The article explores the practice of topographic and cadastre surveys in the nuclear testing facility at Semipalatinsk. The goal of these measures is a land survey to measure the radioactive pollution and identify possible uses of the land with different degrees of pollution for economic purposes of the residents of the nuclear testing facility and its environs. The article introduces the term “forced land use”, which results from the fact that people inhabit territories that have been previously polluted by radiation. The developed land and information approach proposes to divide the area into zones depending on the degree of radiation pollution and possible types of economic activities. Land survey involves a land mapping that shows the registered amounts of radionuclide. Methods of geoinformation analysis and secondary radiactive contamination distribution simulation are employed to conduct the land survey and establish possible economic uses.