In 1945, the United States built and detonated the first nuclear weapon in the deserts of New Mexico. The fallout from that explosion spread to 46 US states, Canada, and Mexico. Three weeks later, the US government dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, killing hundreds of thousands of people, including tens of thousands of children.  

Since those horrific days in 1945, more than 2000 nuclear weapon “tests” have been conducted worldwide by nine nuclear-armed states—China, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), France, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, United Kingdom, and United States. Most of these countries conducted nuclear “tests” in other countries without the consent or knowledge of local populations, in aggressive and unconcionable acts of nuclear colonialism. 

The word “test” does not sufficiently reflect the horror unleashed by the detonation of an atomic bomb. Nuclear “tests” are very real explosions that release radioactive debris globally, scarring landscapes and poisoning plants, animals, oceans, rivers, and human beings. The radioactive legacies of these nuclear detonations persist for generations.  

Current status of nuclear testing 

Today, many nuclear-armed states have closed their test sites and ceased explosive testing. The date for the International Day against Nuclear Tests was chosen to commemorate the closure of the Soviet Union’s Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site in Kazakhstan on 29 August 1991. In 1996, states adopted a treaty prohibiting nuclear testing. 

But this treaty has not yet entered into force because several nuclear-armed states have refused to ratify it. Many of these governments have indicated they stand ready to resume nuclear testing. China, Russia, and the United States all engage in nuclear weapon-related activities at their former test sites, while the United States has continued “subcritical” nuclear testing at its laboratories. While this kind of testing does not result in a nuclear chain reaction or explosion, it violates the spirit of the test ban treaty. The DPRK, which has not signed the test ban, conducted six explosive nuclear tests between 2006 and 2017. All of the nuclear-armed states are modernising their nuclear arsenals, spending more than 100 billion dollars a year. 

Beyond the explosions 

Nuclear tests aren’t just about chain reactions or detonations. All activities associated with nuclear weapons cause grave harm to people, animals, land, and water—from the mining of uranium to the processing of the fuel and building of the bombs, from the detonation of the weapons to the storage of radioactive waste. All of these activities have a disproportionate impact on Indigenous Peoples around the world, contaminating their land and water and generating intergenerational health problems. 

The uranium used in the first atomic weapons came from Shinkolobwe in the (then-called) Belgian Congo, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and from Port Radium, land of the Sahtu Dene First Nations on the shores of Great Bear Lake in so-called Canada. At both sites, local workers were forced to mine in unsafe communities, and the health of workers and communities were gravely impacted. Today, Indigenous Peoples and other local community members work for low wages in dangerous places like uranium mines and nuclear fuel processing centres, which are often situated in low-income and/or on Indigenous lands. 

Nuclear test sites have likewise been intentionally situated away from the political and economic centres of nuclear-armed states, built instead upon colonised and occupied land of Indigenous and racialised people. From 1946 to 1958, for example, the US government detonated 67 nuclear bombs on the Marshall Islands. This created immediate and lasting harm, with suffering continuing to this day “with a legacy of contamination, illness and anguish wrought by these nuclear tests,” including due to the leaking radioactive dome where the United States stored the waste from the tests. Similarly, in so-called French Polynesia, the French government conducted over 200 nuclear “tests” from 1966 to 1996, subjecting inhabitants to devastating health and environmental damage that the French government has tried to conceal.  

The Indigenous Peoples of the United States continue to bear tremendous environmental health impacts of radioactive waste, such as the uranium waste heaped on the lands and territories of the Diné (Navajo) Nation. Meanwhile in Australia, the federal government has repeatedly sought to impose a radioactive waste dump on Indigenous lands, which Aboriginal communities have consistently (and successfully) opposed. Uranium in Australia is and was mined on First Nations land in the Northern Territory and South Australia, despite community opposition. 

Ending nuclear testing means ending nuclear weapons 

None of this is in the past. Since 1945, the perpetuation of theories like nuclear deterrence, created to justify the ongoing nuclear arms race, have resulted in the toxic health and envrionmental impacts—and toxic security cultures—that persist today.  

Eighty years after the first nuclear weapon test, the only to prevent any future testing and prevent harm from other aspects of the nuclear industry is to abolish nuclear weapons. There are actions everyone can take, including:  

• Demand reparations by all nuclear-armed states to all people impacted by nuclear weapon tests, bomb development, uranium mining, and radioactive waste;  
• Demand governments never resume aboveground nuclear weapon testing, end other forms of nuclear weapon testing, abolish uranium mining and nuclear weapon production, and not impose nuclear waste dumps on Indigenous Peoples;   
• Call on nuclear-armed states to immediately cease their nuclear weapon modernisation programmes and redirect that money towards nuclear disarmament, decommissioning and clean-up of nuclear sites, and a just transition for workers to socially and ecologically safe industries; 
• Call on your government to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which prohibits all nuclear testing as well as the development, possession, and use of nuclear weapons, and all other related activities;   
• Urge your local city or town council to join the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)’s Cities Appeal in support of the TPNW;  
• Ask your parliamentarians, senators, or congressional representatives to sign the ICAN Parliamentary Pledge and work for nuclear disarmament;  
• Get involved in ICAN’s Don’t Bank on the Bomb initiative to remove your money from nuclear weapons and compel your bank, pension fund, or financial institution to stop funding nuclear weapon production; and  
• Find out if the universities in your area are helping to build nuclear weapons and campaign to end those contracts.  

Resources for more information 

ICAN’s Interactive Tool on Nuclear Weapon Test Impacts  

Moruroa Files: Investigation of French nuclear tests in the Pacific  

Radioactivity Under the Sand: The Waste from French Nuclear Tests in Algeria 

Nuclear Testing in Australia 

Anointed: Video poem about US nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands 

Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave Up the Bomb 

Notes on Nuclear Weapons and Intersectionality in Theory and Practice