nuclear testing

Detonation of nuclear devices to verify their reliability, power, and destructive abilities. Although carried out secretly in remote regions of the world, such tests are easily detected by the seismic shock waves produced. The first tests were carried out in the atmosphere during the 1950s by the USA, the USSR, and the UK. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was signed by 149 countries in 1996. See nuclear warfare.

These tests produced large quantities of radioactive fallout, still active today. A test ban in 1963 prohibited all tests except those carried out underground. About 2,000 tests have been carried out since World War II, an average of one every nine days. The USA carried out more than 200 secret nuclear tests over the period 1963–90.

France conducted the first of eight planned underground tests in September 1995 at the Mururoa atoll in French Polynesia. However, after carrying out six of these tests, it announced a ‘definitive end’ to its nuclear-testing programme in January 1996; the head of the programme admitted that radioactive iodine had leaked into the sea around the Mururoa atoll, but in ‘insignificant amounts’.

During the second half of May 1998 India and Pakistan conducted a combined total of 11 nuclear tests (five by India followed by six by Pakistan), provoking widespread international outrage, led by the ‘Big Five’ nuclear powers – Britain, China, France, Russia, and the USA. A campaign by the Group of Eight industrial powers, launched by forceful US sanctions against India and Pakistan, claimed some success with the announcement in early June by both Delhi and Islamabad of test moratoria. On 12 June the G-8 countries announced a freeze on all non-humanitarian loans to the two countries in protest at their recent tests. The freeze was largely symbolic given the halt to all International Monetary Fund and World Bank lending imposed late May.