Which countries have carried out nuclear tests? According to the Arms Control Association, at least eight countries have carried out a total of 2,056 nuclear tests since 1945. The US has conducted half of all nuclear tests, with 1,030 tests between 1945 and 1992. In 1954, the US exploded its largest nuclear weapon, a 15 megatonne bomb, on the surface of the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, the test was codenamed Castle Bravo. The power of the nuclear test was miscalculated by scientists, and it resulted in radiation contamination that impacted inhabitants of the atolls. The nuclear fallout of the explosion is said to have spread over 18,130 square kilometres (7,000 square miles).The Soviet Union carried out the second highest number of nuclear tests at 715 tests between 1949 and 1990. The USSR’s first nuclear test was on August 29, 1949. The test, codenamed RDS-1, was conducted at the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan. According to the CTBTO, the Soviet Union conducted 456 tests at the Semipalatinsk test site, with devastating consequences for the local population such as genetic defects and high cancer rates.
Kazakhstan closed the Semipalatinsk test site on August 29, 1991. Following this move, the UN established August 29 as the International Day against Nuclear Tests in 2009. France has carried out 210 nuclear tests, while the United Kingdom and China have each carried out 45 tests. India has carried out three nuclear tests, while Pakistan has carried out two. North Korea is the most recent nation to carry out a nuclear test. In 2017, its sixth and most powerful bomb was detonated at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site. The underground explosion created a magnitude-6.3 tremor. The largest nuclear detonations The largest nuclear explosion occurred in 1961, when the Soviet Union exploded the Tsar Bomba on Novaya Zemlya north of the Arctic Circle. The explosion’s yield was 50 megatonnes, 3,300 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Other major nuclear explosions by different nations include China’s largest detonation in Lop Nur in 1976, the test had a yield of four megatonnes. The UK conducted a series of nuclear tests in the South Pacific Ocean between November 1957 and September 1958 as part of Operation Grapple. Grapple Y was the largest of the operation’s nuclear tests, with a yield of three megatonnes. A survey conducted in 1999 by the British Nuclear Veterans Association found that the impact of the tests on 2,500 veterans who had been present showed that more than 200 had skeletal abnormalities and 30 percent of the men had died, mostly in their fifties. In 1968, France conducted a series of nuclear tests codenamed Canopus at Fangataufa Atoll in the South Pacific Ocean. The test had a yield of 2.6 megatonnes and was 200 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.
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