Kurchatov

Kurchatov, Kazakhstan - darkometer rating : formerly 8 - now possibly no more than 5 or 6 ... This town in eastern Kazakhstan served as the HQ for the Soviet Union 's atomic bomb testing programme conducted on the adjacent Polygon or Semipalatinsk Test Site. Once a "closed city", Kurchatov town can now be visited, albeit only by special arrangement. > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: Kurchatov is the established name of one of those infamously "secret" and "closed" cities connected with the development of nuclear weapons (and other such WMD projects) in the Soviet Union . At first the place didn't even have any name at all, just a Semipalatinsk post code. The town's train station is still not called Kurchatov, but Degelen (like part of the Polygon 's south, i.e. far away) – an intriguing little relic from those days of secrecy and somewhat reminiscent of Baikonur . Eventually though the town was named after the head of the Soviet nuclear programme, Igor Kurchatov, and the name has stuck to this day, i.e. the place has not been included the renaming frenzy after Kazakhstan gained independence, which gave us all those new names for old places, like Semey , Astana and Almaty . Kurchatov town was founded alongside the establishment of the Semipalatinsk Test Site , for which it served as the administrative, logistical and scientific centre for ca. 40 years. At its peak, it had up to 40,000 inhabitants. But after the closure of the test site, and the departure of the Soviet military, numbers dwindled to about a quarter of that. With the disappearance of most of the basis for the town's economy, its infrastructure crumbled too. Much of the town now has the appearance of a ghost town .