A monument to the human cost of nuclear testing in Semey, Kazakhstan (formerly Semipalatinsk, USSR). Semey is located near the Semipalatinsk Test Site, the Soviet Union’s main nuclear testing ground. (Shutterstock/Pavel Mikheyev)

Today Is the ‘International Day Against Nuclear Tests’—Here’s Why

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August 29 marks the anniversary of the first nuclear test at the Soviet Union’s Semipalatinsk test site in modern-day Kazakhstan—and also its closure.

August 29 is the United Nations’ International Day Against Nuclear Tests, an annual observance meant to highlight the consequences of nuclear weapons testing and promote the end of nuclear weapons tests worldwide.

The choice of August 29 for the date was historically fortuitous. On August 29, 1991, shortly before its final dissolution in December of the same year, the Soviet Union formally closed the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, one of its principal nuclear proving grounds. The test site was located in modern-day Kazakhstan, which inherited it after its independence; the newly independent Central Asian nation proposed creating the international observance to honor the occasion, and the UN General Assembly adopted it on December 2, 2009. First observed in 2010, the........

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