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The Race to Secure Kazakhstan’s ‘Plutonium Mountain’

Map of Soviet test site at Semipalatinsk within Kazakhstan. Image source Autonavi / Basarsoft / Google via Belfer Center Plutonium Mountain report.

A remarkable 17-year effort by American and Russian scientists to secure an abandoned nuclear testing facility in Kazakhstan was finally completed last fall.

Radio host Marco Werman speaks about the operation with journalist Eben Harrell, co-author with David Hoffman of the new report on the effort from Harvard's Belfer Center.