Wudan Yan
Wudan Yan is an independent investigative journalist based in Seattle whose beat is as hard to pin down as her location. Her work has appeared in The Daily Beast, Discover Magazine, Hakai Magazine, JSTOR Daily, Matter, Nature, National Public Radio, The New Yorker, Science, STAT News, Washington Post, among others.
Has Kazakhstan forgotten about its Polygon test survivors?
In the nuclear arms race against the US, the former Soviet Union performed more than 450 nuclear tests in an area known as the Semipalatinsk Test Site — also known as the Polygon — from 1949 to 1989. Winds blew the nuclear fallout and radioactive dust into neighboring villages, affecting anywhere between 500,000 to 1 million people.
