The Nova Zembla (in Russian Ru Но́ваяЗемля written Novaïa Zemlia or Novaya Zemlya , “new ground”) is a Archipel of the Arctic Ocean Russian beyond the parallel 60e, composed of two principal island S and of a certain number of others smaller.

Geography

The archipelago of Nova Zembla east made up mainly of the islands Severny (in north) and Ioujny (in the south), separated by the Strait from Matotchkine, very narrow. The archipelago is separated from the coastal island Vaïgatch by the Détroit of Kara. It is bordered in the west by the Mer of Barents and in the east by the Mer of Kara. Its total surface area is of approximately: 90650 km ².

The islands are very mountainous, Nova Zembla being a prolongation of the the Ural, and culminate with: 1070 m of altitude. Severny is covered with many Glacier S while Ioujny offers a landscape of Toundra.

The archipelago has many reserves of Cuivre, Plomb and Zinc. It belongs to the Oblast d' Arkhangelsk.

History

The Nénètses form the population of origin of the archipelago of Nova Zembla. The islands are known since 11th or 12th centuries by the Russians, when merchants of Novgorod visited the area. The research of the Passage of the North-East by the Européens led to its exploration at the 16th century by Hugh Willoughby in 1553, then in 1596 by Willem Barents which circumvented the northern point of Serverny, spent the winter on the east coast and charted the west coast of the archipelago.

Nova Zembla was emptied of its population in 1955 to accommodate the Soviet experiments Nucléaire S . Three sites of tests were built:

• the “site  With”, in the bay Chernaya (70,7° NR - 54,6° E) which was primarily used 1955 with 1962;
• the “site  B”, in the strait of Matotchkine (73,4° NR - 54,9° E) which accommodated underground testing between 1964 and 1990;
• the “site C”, Sukhoy Our (73,7° NR - 54,0° E) which was used as 1957 with 1962 and was the theater on October 30th 1961 of the explosion in the air (to 3.500 m of altitude) of a bomb of 50 megatons, Tsar Bent, strongest nuclear Explosion ever realized.

Other tests were led to other places of the archipelago, half of its surface being officially catalogued like “test area”. Starting from 1989, the process of Glasnost resulted in making the nuclear activities more transparent. Few tests were undertaken during the Années 1990. In 2004, only some research is still undertaken to the strait of Matotchkine.

The 91 atmospheric tests of Nova Zembla represent a total power of 239,6 megatons, that is to say 97% of the power of the Soviet atmospheric tests and nearly 55% of the power released by the totality of the world atmospheric tests (440 MT) note a report/ratio of the Senate and the French National Assembly.

Demography

The indigenous population (nénètse) borders 100 people, remaining primarily of fishing and Chasse.

External bonds

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