NPT Non-nuclear Weapon State
Formerly Possessed Nuclear Weapons

Arsenal Size

• Kazakhstan possesses no nuclear weapons.[1]
• Kazakhstan formerly had 1,410 Soviet strategic nuclear warheads placed on its territory and an undisclosed number of tactical nuclear weapons.[2]
• One of the Soviet Union's two major nuclear test sites was located at Semipalatinsk, where at least 460 nuclear tests took place.[3]

Estimated Destructive Force

• N/A

Progress in Disarmament

• Kazakhstan transferred all of its Soviet-era nuclear weapons to the Russian Federation by April 1995. [4]
• The Semipalatinsk nuclear test site was officially closed in 1991, and the scientific and technical facilities at the site are in the process of being converted to peaceful uses.[5] Work completed from 1996 to 2001 resulted in the closure of 13 unused test holes and 181 tunnels at the test site. [6]

Nuclear Weapon Related Policy

• State party to the NPT, CTBT, START I, and ratified the Lisbon Protocol to START I. [7]
• Signatory to the Central Asia Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone.[8]

Sources:
[1] Joseph Cirincione, Jon B. Wolfsthal, Miriam Rajkumar, Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Threats, (Washington, DC, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005), p. 368.
[2] Joseph Cirincione, Jon B. Wolfsthal, Miriam Rajkumar, Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Threats, (Washington, DC, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005), p. 365.
[3] "The Soviet Union's Nuclear Testing Programme," Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), www.ctbto.org.
[4] Tom Collina, "The Lisbon Protocol at a Glance," Arms Control Association, July 2008, www.armscontrol.org.
[5] IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano, "Statement to Conference for a Nuclear-Weapons-Free World," Astana, 12 October 2011, www.iaea.org; "Semipalatinsk Revisited: Old Nuclear Test Site Sets New Course," International Atomic Energy Agency, 31 August 2006, www.iaea.org.
[6] "STS Nuclear Infrastructure Elimination and Conversion," National Nuclear Center of the Republic of Kazakhstan, old.nnc.kz.
[7] "Inventory of International Nonproliferation Organizations and Regimes: Kazakhstan," James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, updated 18 November 2011, cns.miis.edu.
[8] NWFZ Clearinghouse, James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, cns.miis.edu.