You Might Want to Know: How many nuclear tests have we conducted?
You Might Want to Know: How many nuclear tests have we conducted?
How many would you guess? Before going on, jot down a number.
Most people guess way low.
If we want to be exact, we have to decide what we are going count as a nuclear test. Do we count the tests that studied how plutonium was dispersed by conventional explosives? Do we count the one-point safety tests to see whether a nuclear bomb that had only two detonators on its conventional explosives would go critical if only one detonator went off? When we set off a salvo of blasts in a test, do we count it as one test or several?
Should we leave wiggle room for tests we’ve never been told about?
Do you count the bombs that were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as tests? In Los Alamos, I once saw someone wearing a T-shirt that had a picture of a mushroom cloud on it and the words, “Made in the USA, Tested in Japan.” That is, of course, vile. What happened in Japan was a “use,” not a “test.” The only uses of nuclear weapons in war. So far.
The total number of tests is, let’s just say, one-thousand fifty-four. That’s about right. As I say, it depends on what you count.
The low estimates people usually make may come from the fact that after 1963 no more tests were conducted in the atmosphere, where they could be seen. In that year, we and the Soviet Union signed a treaty--the Partial Test Ban Treaty--that banned tests in the atmosphere. By 1963, we had conducted two-hundred nineteen tests in the atmosphere, in the ocean, and in space. The tests in the atmosphere and the ocean were the ones that produced the spectacular pictures.
After 1963, we did many more tests but all the tests were now conducted underground. Underground tests didn’t produce pictures. A heaving of the earth sometimes. A big dust cloud. If the test cracked the earth open, as some of them did, radioactive fission products were vented, but nothing you could see.
We’d agreed to this treaty with the Soviet Union because we’d finally recognized, and admitted, that nuclear tests in the atmosphere produced radioactive fallout that killed people. You couldn’t say who or when or where exactly, but some people would die before their time. This was a statistical certainty.
Our one-thousand fifty-four tests is more than the total number of nuclear tests by all other nations combined. For the Soviet Union, the number is seven-hundred fifteen. France is next at two-hundred ten, with some of those having been conducted in the atmosphere after we, the Soviets, and the UK had signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty. The UK and China—forty-five tests each. India, Pakistan, and North Korea all together—seventeen or so.
The totals for these last three countries may yet go up. They have not agreed to stop testing. Neither have we, for that matter. The United Nations adopted a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in September 1996. One-hundred sixty-six states signed and ratified the treaty. Our UN representatives signed it but our Congress has so far refused to ratify it. The other countries that haven’t yet ratified it are China, Egypt, Iran, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea.
Still, we haven’t done any more explosive tests since 1992. We could do some if we wanted to without violating a treaty. That’s the way our Congress seems to want it.
I doubt that most Americans want it that way. If that matters.
Next: Where all have we done nuclear tests? What all for?