Nuclear tests: which countries are continuing?

Do nuclear tests belong to yesterday’s world? Since the first American tests in 1945, scripted this summer in the film Oppenheimer, named after the “father of the atomic bomb”, more than 2000 explosions have taken place on the planet, officially known.

But today, and as international treaties have limited and then banned all nuclear testing, there are hardly any countries that continue testing in real conditions. In other words, in the atmosphere, underground, or in the sea. Yet the war in Ukraine raises fears of a new nuclear arms race. “The Russian Ministry of Defense and Rosatom (the Russian atomic energy giant, editor’s note) must ensure that they are ready to test Russian nuclear weapons,” Vladimir Putin said in April. “Of course, we will not be the first to do so. But if the United States tests, then we will, ”he warned.

Since the opening of the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty (CTBT) in 1996, which has still not entered into force but which imposed a de facto moratorium, only a handful of new tests have been counted. The treaty continues to be promoted each year on August 29, the International Day against Nuclear Tests.

In May 1998, India tested a series of tests a few days apart with the explosion of fusion and nuclear fission bombs. Pakistan responds immediately with underground tests on May 28 and then a test in the desert on May 30.

Since then, only North Korea has carried out officially listed tests. Six times the communist dictatorship tested its bombs. The country also rejected last spring the call of the G7 to “refrain” from any new nuclear test. “The position of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is final and irreversible,” said North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui.

In the history of nuclear testing, the two Cold War enemies are by far the countries that have carried out the most tests. The United States is in the lead with 1,125 trials carried out, mostly in the state of Nevada. Russia has carried out 720 tests, most of them in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the North Seas. The two countries last tested a nuclear bomb in 1992 and 1990 respectively.

France completes the podium with 210 tests between 1960 and 1996 carried out in the Sahara desert first, then in French Polynesia. The last test takes place in Fangataufa atoll.

Since then, some countries such as the United States have developed technologies to simulate nuclear tests in the laboratory, thus freeing themselves from the environmental and legal constraints of tests in real conditions. France has in particular developed, thanks to its Simulation program launched in 1996 after the cessation of French tests in the Pacific, a Laser Megajoule which makes it possible to simulate the explosion of a thermonuclear bomb by producing fusion reactions on a very small scale of a few millimeters.