On Aug. 29, 1949 in Kazakhstan at the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site at 7 o’clock in the morning, an explosion thundered. This was the first test of nuclear weapons in the USSR. In total, 456 nuclear explosions were conducted at the test site, 116 of which were atmospheric explosions. Experts calculated that the total capacity of those atmospheric explosions was 2,500 times higher than the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. More than 1.5 million people have suffered from nuclear tests in Kazakhstan.