International Day against Nuclear Tests 2023: History and Significance

INTERNATIONAL DAY AGAINST NUCLEAR TESTING: Director Christopher Nolan's biopic 'Oppenheimer' is all the rage right now. J. Robert Oppenheimer was the American theoretical physicist who developed the atomic bomb and tested it in 1945 during World War II. Since then there have been more than 2,000 nuclear tests that have poisoned the air, land and water, harming people and other life in the process. On August 29 of each year, the International Day against Nuclear Tests is celebrated to demand an end to such tests.

International Day Against Nuclear Tests 2023: History

The first nuclear test, called "Trinity", was carried out on July 16, 1945 in the deserts of New Mexico within the framework of the Manhattan Project of the United States government led by Oppenheimer. The bomb, dubbed the "device," was created against Germany during World War II but was eventually used against Japan.

The success of the Trinity test led to the United States airdropping the "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. As a result, around 110,000 lives were lost. The survivors and their progeny suffered from cancer and birth defects.

The United States also detonated 24 nuclear bombs on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958. The former Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, and China also carried out such tests. Then the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union began, starting in 1947 and continuing until 1991. Treaties such as the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) ) and the Treaty of Semipalatinsk.

Millions of Kazakhs suffered radioactive fallout due to Soviet nuclear tests at the Semipalatinsk site in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan initiated a resolution at the United Nations establishing August 29 as the International Day Against Nuclear Tests, December 2, 2009.

International Day against Nuclear Tests 2023: Significance

Oppenheimer felt that by developing the atomic bomb he had given people the power to destroy the world. Throughout his later life, he tried to stop the arms race and urged control of nuclear weapons. As the UN Secretary General pointed out, there are currently nearly 13,000 nuclear weapons in stockpiles around the world. The International Day Against Nuclear Testing continues Oppenheimer's fight against such storage.