Chagan (nuclear test)
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Chagan was a Soviet nuclear test during the Soviet atomic bomb project and was the most powerful test in the Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy series. It was an underground test, and was fired on January 15, 1965. The blast was the equivalent of 140 kilotons of TNT. The test apparently violated the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, and the United States complained to the Soviets, but the matter was dropped.
The photo has been mistakenly credited as the Soviet test, Joe 1 (Richard Rhode's 1995 Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb and David Holloway's 1994 Stalin and the Bomb).
The site was a dry bed of the Chagan River at the edge of the Semipalatinsk Test Site, and was chosen such that the lip of the crater would dam the river during its high spring flow. The resultant crater had a diameter of 408 meters (1,338 feet) and was 100 meters (328 feet) deep.
[edit] Lake Chagan
Lake Chagan (or Lake Balapan), Kazakhstan, is a lake created by the Chagan nuclear test. It is roughly 10,000,000 m3 in volume, or 2.6 billion gallons.
As of 2006, the area is still radioactive, and has been called the Atomic Lake. As at the Trinity site of the first United States nuclear weapon test in Alamagordo, New Mexico, the exposed rock was melted into a glassy substance.
[edit] See also
- Sedan (nuclear test) -- An American cratering detonation
[edit] External links and references
