ABSTRACT

This article starts by anatomising the various strategies used by the Soviet regime to contain and ‘disappear’ the nuclear weapon test site in Kazakhstan before moving on to outline attempts by the independent Republic of Kazakshtan's National Nuclear Centre (NNC) to be more open—including making much of the site available for commercial and agricultural use, after 25 years of remediation and monitoring. Juxtaposing these strategies with accounts from residents living in the town that hosts the NNC provides far more ambivalent engagements with both town and site. Thus, in what I call a chronotope of expansion, what appears is a resistance to any kind of spatial or temporal containment, a denial of progress and the possibility of moving to a brighter nuclear future by leaving behind the Soviet period and its entailments. I end by discussing the consequences of assumptions that the site can be limited and bounded in terms of radioactive contamination.

摘要

本文首先剖析了苏联政权为遏制和“消除”哈萨克斯坦核武器试验场而采取的各种策略，然后概述了独立的哈萨克斯坦共和国国家核中心 (NNC) 为更加开放所做的努力，包括经过 25 年的修复和监测，该地点的大部分区域可供商业和农业使用。将这些策略与居住在 NNC 所在城镇的居民的叙述放在一起，可以提供与城镇和场地更加矛盾的互动。因此，在我所说的扩张时间段中，出现的是对任何形式的空间或时间遏制的抵制，对进步的否定，以及通过抛开苏联时期及其后果而迈向更光明的核未来的可能性。