The Shagan ( kk, Шаған - ''Şağan'') is a river in the east of
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...
and a tributary of the
Irtysh. The river is long and the area of its basin is .
Geography
The Shagan has its sources in the northwestern slopes of the
Chingiztau, a subrange of the
Kazakh Uplands. It heads mainly northwards along semi-desert areas all along its course. Finally it meets the left bank of the Irtysh to the west of
Semey
Semey ( kk, Семей, Semei, سەمەي; cyrl, Семей ), until 2007 known as Semipalatinsk (russian: Семипала́тинск) and in 1917–1920 as Alash-kala ( kk, Алаш-қала, ''Alaş-qala''), is a city in eastern Kazakhst ...
, former Semipalatinsk, city. Its food is mainly snow and the river is under ice between November and April. It flows during the spring floods, from May to June. In the summer it dries up or breaks up into disconnected pools. Its main tributary is the
Ashchysu from the right,
[Шаган](_blank)
''Great Soviet Encyclopedia
The ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' (GSE; ) is one of the largest Russian-language encyclopedias, published in the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1990. After 2002, the encyclopedia's data was partially included into the later ''Bolshaya rossiyskaya e ...
'' in 30 vols. — Ch. ed. A.M. Prokhorov
Alexander Mikhailovich Prokhorov (born Alexander Michael Prochoroff, russian: Алекса́ндр Миха́йлович Про́хоров; 11 July 1916 – 8 January 2002) was an Australian-born Soviet-Russian physicist known ...
. - 3rd ed. - M. Soviet Encyclopedia, 1969–1978. (in Russian)
History
It is located in the area of the
Semipalatinsk Test Site, which was used as the primary testing venue for the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons. The river flows along the eastern boundary of the test site and fills the "Atomic Lake"
Lake Shagan (or Lake Balapan), a lake created by the
Chagan nuclear test. The lake was formed at the confluence with the
Ashchysu in January 1965.
International Nuclear Information System (INIS)
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See also
* List of rivers of Kazakhstan
References
External links
Radioactive contamination of the Shagan River ecosystem
Rivers of Kazakhstan
{{Kazakhstan-river-stub