SEMEY , Kazakhstan ( CNN ) -- Kazakhstan 's nuclear orphans are a distressing sight . This young child slept at an orphanage , his deformities the result of nuclear testing in the region . The first child I met in the local orphanage was lying limply in his crib . His giant , pale head was perched on his tiny shoulders , covered in bed sores , like a grotesquely painted paper-mâché mask . Peering out , a pair of tiny black eyes darted around . It took me a few seconds to understand what I was seeing . The doctor told me he was 4 years old . Through the bars in the next crib , I saw another child , twisted with deformities . His fragile legs and arms turned in impossible contortions . These are the children of Kazakhstan 's terrifying nuclear past . Decades of Soviet nuclear testing unleashed a plague of birth defects . When the Soviet Union tested its nuclear devices , it chose eastern Kazakhstan , one of its remotest , most desolate areas . But no one bothered to evacuate the people living there . Watch the effects of nuclear bombs on villagers » . The testing began in 1949 at a site known as Polygon and continued until 1989 . According to the Nuclear Threat Initiative , there were 456 tests , including 116 nuclear bombs tested above ground . The Polygon site officially closed on August 29 , 1991 -- 16 years ago this week . Local officials say there were hundreds of thousands of people , possibly as many as a million , who lived in the region during the nuclear testing . The end of the Cold War might have ended this dark chapter , but thousands are still paying a terrible price . Learn more about nuclear testing » . From the old Soviet city of Semipalatinsk , now renamed Semey , it was a long grueling drive across the barren , flat Kazakh plain . Nature can be hostile here , with temperatures hitting over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in summer , then plunging to 40 below in winter . The people living in the villages scattered throughout this former nuclear testing zone have been through the unspeakable . Seriqkaisha is 62 years old . She remembers watching the mushroom clouds as a child . `` We were very frightened , '' she told me , `` because the windows in our house would blow out and the walls would shake . My parents both died of cancer , and my own son is handicapped . '' Almost every family in Seriqkaisha 's village , 20 miles from the old test site , is affected -- from cancers to impotency to birth defects and other deformities . See where the nuclear site is located » . Meeting people was proving hard . The genetic defections and illnesses that afflict so many here are frequently a source of shame . The doctor told me that people hide their deformed family members from outsiders . For decades , they have felt like animals in a zoo , she said , and had grown to distrust prying eyes . The region also has one of the highest suicide rates in the world , according to local health officials . Tragically , many young men who discover they are impotent -- one of the effects of nuclear fallout -- end their own lives . A doctor introduced me to Biken -- one of the few residents who agreed to be interviewed . She was born in 1951 , two years after the nuclear testing began . Her facial disfigurement , she said , has always brought her despair . `` If only there had been no bombs , I could have been equal to every one else . My youngest daughter looks like me too . I worry about her future , more than anything , '' Biken said . It was heartbreaking to hear . The problem of defects is so big , there 's even a museum of mutations at the regional medical institute back in Semey , the largest city near the old nuclear testing site . It 's a small room filled with jars containing deformed fetuses and human organs preserved in formaldehyde . It 's hard to look at them -- babies with bulging eyes and malformed brains , or conjoined twins locked in a contorted embrace . The head of the institute , Tolebae Rakhipbekov , showed me around and told me how this house was more than just a grim collection of anomalies . It was the reality for some parents , and a real fear for everyone who lives here . `` You could call these children , and others affected , victims of the Cold War . Kazakhstan has refused nuclear ambitions now because it experienced 40 years of this war . Nowhere else were there so many nuclear tests , '' Rakhhipbekov said . And nowhere else , I suppose , are so many Cold War injustices still being felt . E-mail to a friend .
Thousands in Kazakhstan remain scarred from decades of nuclear tests . The Soviet Union did not evacuate villages when testing began . Deformed woman : `` If only there had been no bombs , I could have been equal '' The problem of deformities is so big that there 's a museum of mutations .