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, fired on January 15, 1965. The yield was the equivalent of 140 kilotons of TNT. While the test did not violate the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty (it was an underground test), the United States nonetheless complained to the Soviets.
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).
Now this photo of obviously above-ground blast is attributed to the underground Chagan experiment. However you can just look at original article in Russian to see the real photo of underground blast, throwing ground out from deep.
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 has a diameter of 408 meters (1,338 feet) and is 100 meters (328 feet) deep.
[edit] Lake Chagan
| Lake Chagan | |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | |
| Basin countries | Kazakhstan |
| Water volume | 10,000,000 m³ |
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. It is located at the co-ordinates: 49.935091 N,79.010754 E.
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 Alamogordo, New Mexico, the exposed rock was melted into a glassy substance.
[edit] See also
- Sedan (nuclear test) -- An American cratering detonation
