Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Semipalatinsk City Council voted unanimously in 2007 to rename the city Semey. The chairman stated that the old name carried negative associations because of the extensive nuclear weapons testing conducted nearby at the Semipalatinsk Test Site.
456 nuclear tests took place at the Semipalatinsk Test Site between 1949 and 1989. Of those, 340 were underground tests and 116 were atmospheric tests.
Residents of villages neighbouring the test site experienced high rates of cancer, childhood leukemia, and birth defects. These effects resulted from nuclear fallout from the atmospheric tests and uncontrolled exposure of workers who lived near the site.
The Museum of F. M. Dostoevsky in Semey opened on the 7th of May 1971. It is the only one of seven Dostoevsky museums in the world located outside Russia.
Notable people born in Semey include the novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), the poet and philosopher Abai Qunanbaiuly (1845-1904), Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko (born 1976), writer Pavel Bazhov (1879-1950), and oceanographer Stanislav Kurilov (1936-1998).
Semey became the administrative centre of Abai Region on the 8th of June 2022, when Abai Region formally became an official region of Kazakhstan. President Tokayev had selected Semey for this role in March 2022.