The entire Soviet system only released information through a strong propaganda filter. There was simply no room for any action of the government to be reflected poorly. These tests by and large ended up radiating populations and not telling them.
Proof? It was an underground explosion in a very sparsely populated location. How exactly and whom it ended up radiating?
Of course, we don't actually know the details about any of it. But there were plenty of underground nuclear explosions, and people are usually quite good at controlling them.
Another test - a nuclear blast in the vicinity of Moscow, which caused small contaminated area (100x150 m) as well as risk of polluting the Volga basin.
Man, that was a fun paragraph to write.
Not everyone in the sowjets was forced to be there. Idealism is a strong driving force, otherwise the sowjet empire would not have sustained itself for so long on propaganda alone.
This was an active natural gas well and drilling area. No one was living near it--it would have been a nightmare of potential deadly gas exposure to do so, even ignoring the nuclear blast. The blast was 1000+ meters underground so no cloud or fallout was thrown into the air. The really dangerous radioisotopes from most bombs have a half life less than a decade so everything underground is likely pretty benign now. But again, no one is going to be digging a hole 1000 meters down into a former natural gas well to go live there.
did he claim that?
I keep wondering if it was deliberate or just a “happy little accident”.
Turn on CC if you don’t know russian.