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US Atomic Tests Could Open Pandora’s Box for ‘New Arms Race and Nuclear War’

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 31.10.2025

A nuclear war risk is growing and Washington’s apparent readiness to resume nuclear tests is making it more grave, warns Professor Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University, in an interview with Sputnik.

“All nine nuclear powers are modernizing their nuclear arsenals, making them more efficient and more deadly. On top of that, there’s pressure to expand the nuclear arsenals,” Kuznick tells Sputnik.

To complicate matters further, other countries – including South Korea and Ukraine – are flirting with the idea of developing their own nuclear weapons, the professor notes.

The world is going the wrong direction and becoming more dangerous.

US Unready for Nuclear Tests

If the US resumes nuclear tests, Russia and China will follow suit, according to the professor.

“They actually have more to gain from this than the US does,” he says, adding that it would probably take years before the US would be able to conduct new nuclear tests, as the Nevada test site has effectively atrophied.

At the same time, it would mean the end of the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which have not been ratified by the majority of nuclear powers. Up until now, the US, Russia and China have abided by it: the last Russian nuclear test took place in 1990, China’s – in 1996.

Reaction to Russian Wonder-Weapon?

The idea of resuming nuclear tests followed Russia’s trials of its cutting-edge weapons. Could the US boast anything like that? Not yet — and it would take years to catch up, according to the pundit.

“The Burevestnik and the Poseidon [missiles] are new science fiction-like, new generation of nuclear delivery systems. You add that to the Oreshnik test back in November 2024,” Kuznick notes.

Give Peace a Chance

The most logical response to Washington’s breaking the de facto moratorium on nuclear tests should be “the United States is out of control,” Kuznick says.

“That would be what [Russia and China] should say and do and call for new talks to end this expansion, intensification of the nuclear arms race,” the professor underscores.

US President Donald Trump in the meantime said that it will be known soon whether the United States will resume underground nuclear testing.

“You will find out very soon,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he traveled to Palm Beach, Florida, as quoted by Reuters.

October 31, 2025 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

No more nuclear weapons testing

By Bjorn Hilt | International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War | September 8, 2014

A complete halt to all nuclear weapons testing is within reach. The testing of nuclear weapons is already prohibited under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) of 1996.

The problem is that not enough countries have yet ratified the treaty for it to enter into force. Along with 159 other governments, the nuclear-weapon-possessing states that have ratified the treaty so far are Great Britain, France, and Russia, while the US and China are still reluctant to do so, for who knows what reason (www.ctbto.org ). China says it will ratify the treaty the day the US does. For the CTBT to enter into force, however, six other  States still need to ratify the treaty: India, Pakistan, Israel, the DPRK, Egypt, and Iran. Many experts believe that US ratification is the key to all the others. Consequently, the whole world is held hostage just because the US Senate refuses to ratify an international treaty that is vital to us all.

During the past week, IPPNW held its 21st World Congress in Astana, Kazakhstan, with around 300 physicians and medical students from 35 countries participating. Our host country has suffered a lot from nuclear weapons testing. From 1949 until 1989 the former Soviet Union had its main testing site for nuclear weapons near the town of Semipalatinsk in eastern Kazakhstan. During that time the USSR performed at least 456 nuclear tests at the site of which at least 92 were atmospheric, introducing a serious radiation burden into the environment. Radiation from nuclear fallout was far beyond what humans can normally tolerate.

The health consequences of testing in Kazakhstan have been studied in recent years. They have been—and still are—dramatic: excess cancers and other diseases, malformations, and genetic damage. The good news in this terrible situation is that when Kazakhstan became independent in 1991, the government decided to shut down the nuclear weapons test site and to dismantle or return to Russia all of the 1,410 nuclear warheads that Kazakhstan had inherited from the former Soviet Union. The transfer was completed in 1995 and made Kazakhstan a much safer place for its 18 million inhabitants.

Moreover, in 2006, the independent states Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan declared Central Asia a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone and, in May 2014, the five old states that still possess nuclear weapons issued a guarantee that they would never use nuclear weapons against any of the Central Asian states. Good news for them.

As the Kazakhs have seen the terrible long term effects of nuclear testing on their own people, they have initiated an international campaign against nuclear testing called the ATOM project (Abolish Testing – Our Mission). They have called for 29 August to be the International Day Against Nuclear Weapons Testing, and the occasion was marked with a minute of silence in many places while we were in Kazakhstan.

I think that the states that have not yet ratified the CTBT, in particular the US and China, owe it to the victims of nuclear weapons testing and uranium exploitation all over the world to ratify the treaty right away as a concrete and necessary step on our way towards a safer world free of nuclear weapons.

September 8, 2014 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment