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The Shagan ( - ''Şağan''; - ''Chagan''), is a river in the Zhanasemey, Abai and Beskaragay districts of
Abai Region Abai Region (, ) is a Regions of Kazakhstan, region of Kazakhstan. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev announced on 16 March 2022 that the region would be created. The area split off from East Kazakhstan Region when Tokayev's bill came into force on 8 ...
, east
Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...
. It is a tributary of the
Irtysh The Irtysh is a river in Russia, China, and Kazakhstan. It is the chief tributary of the Ob (river), Ob and is also the longest tributary in the world. The river's source lies in the Altai Mountains, Mongolian Altai in Dzungaria (the northern p ...
. 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 The Kazakh Uplands or the Kazakh Hummocks, known in Kazakh as the ( , ; ), is a large peneplain formation extending throughout the central and eastern regions of Kazakhstan.
. 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 (; , formerly known as Semipalatinsk ( ) until 2007 and as Alash-Qala ( ) from 1917 to 1920, is a city in eastern Kazakhstan, in the Kazakh part of Siberia. When Abai Region was created in 2022, Semey became its administrative centre. I ...
, 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
''
Great Soviet Encyclopedia The ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' (GSE; , ''BSE'') 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 ''Great Russian Enc ...
'' in 30 vols. — Ch. ed.
A.M. Prokhorov Alexander Mikhailovich Prokhorov (born Alexander Michael Prochoroff, ; 11 July 1916 – 8 January 2002) was an Australian-born Russian physicist and researcher on lasers and masers, in the former Soviet Union. He shared the Nobel Prize in Ph ...
. - 3rd ed. - M. Soviet Encyclopedia, 1969–1978. (in Russian)


History

The lower course of the Shagan is located in the Balapan Complex area of the Semipalatinsk Polygon, the primary testing venue for the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons. The river flows from the western boundary of the test site and fills the "Atomic Lake" Lake Shagan (or Lake Balapan), a lake created by the Chagan nuclear test at the confluence with the Ashchysu. 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 Geography of Abai Region {{Kazakhstan-river-stub