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Everyday Radioactive Goods? Economic Development at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2017

Magdalena E. Stawkowski
Magdalena E. Stawkowski*
Affiliation:
Magdalena E. Stawkowski (mestawko@ncsu.edu) is Teaching Scholar in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at North Carolina State University and Fellow at the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies (CSEEES) at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill.
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Extract

I first heard of “radioactive coal” in the summer of 2012, when I was living in the small village of Koyan, one of many settlements in Eastern Kazakhstan that hosted the Soviet-era Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site. A scandal over the sale of radioactive coal had erupted in the fall of 2011 when local media began reporting on a train from Kazakhstan carrying more than eight thousand tons of it (in 130 wagons) to a heating plant in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Upon discovering that radioactivity in the shipment was eight times higher than normal, Kyrgyz authorities had it removed from the Bishkek's central heating plant. Rather than discarding it, they put it to use elsewhere, including in the heating stoves of more than one orphanage, a kindergarten, and several rural schools. When media covered this development, public outcry forced Kyrgyz politicians to demand that the coal be returned to Kazakhstan; allegations of corruption and arrests of Kyrgyz officials ensued. Political wrangling over responsibility and refunds meant that negotiations between Kazakh and Kyrgyz authorities took more than a year to complete. Finally, Kazakhstan allowed the coal to be returned.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 76 , Issue 2 , May 2017 , pp. 423 - 436
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2017 

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