WASHINGTON — The Soviet Union, bowing to extraordinary political pressure from its citizens, has decided to end underground nuclear explosions at its principal test site in South-Central Asia within three years and move a sharply reduced atomic testing program to a remote island within the Arctic circle, according to Soviet and U.S. sources.
The move, announced in Moscow this week by a senior defense official at a hearing of the Supreme Soviet legislature, is aimed at satisfying residents near the Semipalatinsk test site in rural Kazakhstan who claim they repeatedly have been exposed to radiation generated by the detonations.
