STRONGER THAN DEATH" NUCLEAR MEMORIAL

Soberly named "Stronger than Death", this monument was erected on August 29, 2001 on Polkovnichy Island, just south of the city, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the closure of the nuclear test site, but also the date on which the first Soviet atomic bomb exploded. A thirty-meter-high black marble column, hollowed out to evoke a nuclear mushroom cloud, towers over a statue of a woman trying to protect her child. The monument is now mostly visited by newlyweds, who choose to have their photo taken there rather than in front of the statue of Abay! Nearly 500 nuclear tests were carried out by the Soviets in the Semipalatinsk quadrangle, on the Kurchatov site. The latter can only be visited with special authorization and radiation protection equipment.

In 2009, the United Nations chose August 29 as the "International Day against Nuclear Tests". This choice was made at Kazakhstan's suggestion, which is no doubt why the dates of July 16 (the first American atomic test, in 1945, in the New Mexico desert) or February 13 (the first French atomic test, in the Sahara) were not chosen. These three nations alone carried out 97% of the 2,404 nuclear tests that took place worldwide on that date: 210 for France, 980 for the Soviets and 1,110 for the Americans.