The first USSR nuclear test “Joe 1” at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, 29 August 1949. Credit: CTBTO
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 31 2025 – The lingering after-effects of nuclear tests by the world’s nuclear powers have left a devastating impact on hundreds and thousands of victims world-wide.
The history of nuclear testing, according to the United Nations, began 16 July 1945 at a desert test site in Alamogordo, New Mexico when the United States exploded its first atomic bomb.
In the five decades, between 1945 and the opening for signature of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996, over 2,000 nuclear tests were carried out all over the world.
- • The United States conducted 1,032 tests between 1945 and 1992.
• The Soviet Union carried out 715 tests between 1949 and 1990.
• The United Kingdom carried out 45 tests between 1952 and 1991.
• France carried out 210 tests between 1960 and 1996.
• China carried out 45 tests between 1964 and 1996.
• India carried out 1 test in 1974.
Since the CTBT was opened for signature in September 1996, 10 nuclear tests have been conducted:
- • India conducted two tests in 1998.
• Pakistan conducted two tests in 1998.
• The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea conducted nuclear tests in 2006, 2009, 2013, 2016, and 2017.
On October 30, President Donald Ttrump, just ahead of his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, announced on social media, that the US will resume testing nuclear weapons for the first time in over 30 years.
But this time on an “equal basis” with Russia and China.
The main former US nuclear test sites were the Nevada Test Site (now the Nevada National Security Site) and the Pacific Proving Grounds in the Marshall Islands and near Kiritimati (Christmas) Island. Other tests also occurred in various locations across the United States, including New Mexico, Colorado, Alaska, and Mississippi.
The Nevada test site, located in Nye County, Nevada, was the most active, with over 1,000 tests conducted between 1951 and 1992.
Speaking at a meeting, September 26, on The International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned “nuclear testing threats are returning, while nuclear saber rattling is louder than in past decades.”
Meanwhile, a New York Times story October 29, headlined “China is Racing to Lead World in Nuclear Power,” harks back to the 45 nuclear tests by China between 1964 and 1996.
According to one report, nuclear test survivors in China, particularly ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang, face a situation where their health issues from radiation exposure are largely unrecognized, and their voices are systematically silenced by the government.
“The Chinese state has actively suppressed information about the devastating consequences of its nuclear testing program on the local population”.
According to an AI generated overview, China’s tests included both atmospheric and underground tests, which included 22 atmospheric detonations, which exposed the local population to significant radioactive fallout.
The Chinese government claimed the test site was a “barren and isolated” area with no permanent residents. In reality, Uyghur herders and farmers had lived there for centuries.
Independent research and anecdotal evidence paint a grim picture of the human and environmental costs.
Medical experts have documented a disproportionate increase in cancers, birth defects, leukemia, and degenerative disorders in Xinjiang compared to the rest of China.
Alice Slater, who serves on the boards of World BEYOND War and the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, and is a UN NGO Representative for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, told IPS regardless of China ‘s unfair treatment of downwinders at Lop Nor, is it any more egregious than the treatment of the downwinders in Nevada, Kazakhstan, and the Marshall Islands, who suffered the effects of US, Russian and French tests?
What can we LEARN from China during these terrible times if imminent nuclear annihilation?
They just reissued their joint appeal with Russia to negotiate treaties to ban weapons in space and war in space and pledged never to be the first to use or place weapons in space. Unlike the US and Russia which keep their nuclear bombs on missiles poised and ready to fire, China separates their warheads from their missiles, she said.
The Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons DID enter into force when 50 countries ratified it, she pointed out. Although many more than 50 have now signed and ratified it, NONE of the nuclear weapons states or any of the US allies harboring under the US nuclear “umbrella” have signed., said Slater.
Tariq Rauf, Former Head of Verification and Security Policy, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told IPS: Is the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty a Flawed Treaty?
The objective of a comprehensive ban on nuclear testing originally had been truly comprehensive: non-proliferation and disarmament, but the CTBT lacks substantive link to nuclear disarmament, he pointed out.
“Throughout the treaty negotiations, the purpose of a ban on all forms of testing became progressively de-linked from the ultimate objective of the total elimination of nuclear weapons.
In the final text, non-nuclear-weapon States were barely able to establish a relationship between the exhortations for disarmament in the preamble and the operative text.
The CTBT even permits non-explosive forms of testing, which, with advances in technology, may today be used to refine nuclear weapons and to design new ones. Nuclear test sites remain active in China, Russia, US (DPRK, India, Pakistan ??). France is the only NWS to have decommissioned its test site.
China, Egypt, Iran, Russia and the US need to ratify, but there is no pressure exerted on these NPT States in NPT meetings. And the same goes for non-signatories, DPRK, India, Israel and Pakistan, he said.
“It seems that the CTBT will never enter into force, but hopefully the moratoria on nuclear testing would continue?”
Kazakhstan and the Marshall Islands are leading efforts to set up an international trust fund for victims of nuclear testing, under the aegis of Article 6 of the TNPW. The CTBT lacks any provision on assistance to victims of testing, Rauf said.
According to the United Nations, The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty bans nuclear testing everywhere on the planet — surface, atmosphere, underwater and underground.
The Treaty takes on significance as it also aims to obstruct the development of nuclear weapons: both the initial development of nuclear weapons as well as their substantial improvement (e.g. the advent of thermonuclear weapons) necessitate real nuclear testing.
The CTBT makes it almost impossible for countries that do not yet have nuclear weapons to develop them. And it makes it almost impossible for countries that have nuclear weapons to develop new or more advanced weapons. It also helps prevent the damage caused by nuclear testing to humans and the environment.
Reacting to Trump’s announcement, U.S. Senator Jack Reed (Democrat -Rhode Island), the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said: “Once again, President Trump has it wrong when it comes to nuclear weapons policy.”
This time, he seems to have ordered the Pentagon to resume nuclear explosive weapons testing. This confusing directive reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of our nuclear enterprise—it is the Department of Energy, not the Department of Defense, that manages our nuclear weapons complex and any testing activities.
“Breaking the explosive testing moratorium that the United States, Russia, and China have maintained since the 1990s would be strategically reckless, inevitably prompting Moscow and Beijing to resume their own testing programs”.
Further, he said, American explosive testing would provide justification for Pakistan, India, and North Korea to expand their own testing regimes, destabilizing an already fragile global nonproliferation architecture at precisely the moment we can least afford it.
“The United States would gain very little from such testing, and we would sacrifice decades of hard-won progress in preventing nuclear proliferation.”
This article is brought to you by INPS Japan in collaboration with Soka Gakkai International, in consultative status with the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
INPS Japan
IPS UN Bureau Report
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