Trinity test
The first nuclear device detonates in the New Mexico desert; the plutonium implosion design vindicates the Manhattan Project weeks before Hiroshima.
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The bomb spreads
Nuclear programs country by country: Trinity, the arms race, the proliferators, and the one state that built the bomb and gave it up.
Nuclear programs country by country: Trinity, the arms race, the proliferators, and the one state that built the bomb and gave it up.
57 newly added in the last 14 days
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Operation Crossroads at Bikini Atoll
The United States begins postwar nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll after relocating its inhabitants. The islanders never return permanently, opening a long legacy of displacement and contamination in the Marshall Islands.
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Soviet first nuclear test RDS-1
The Soviet Union detonates its first atomic bomb at the Semipalatinsk test site, years earlier than Western estimates. The American monopoly ends and the nuclear arms race begins.
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EBR-I generates the first nuclear electricity
The Experimental Breeder Reactor I in Idaho produces the first usable electricity from atomic energy, lighting four bulbs. It is the first small step from weapons work toward nuclear power.
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Operation Hurricane
Britain detonates its first atomic bomb aboard a frigate off Western Australia, becoming the third nuclear power. The test caps a crash program launched after the United States cut off wartime cooperation.
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Ivy Mike, the first hydrogen bomb
The United States detonates the first full-scale thermonuclear device at Enewetak Atoll, vaporizing the island of Elugelab. The 10-megaton blast is hundreds of times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.
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Soviet thermonuclear test RDS-6s
The Soviet Union tests its first thermonuclear device, the layered design of Andrei Sakharov. Unlike Ivy Mike it is a deliverable bomb, and it keeps the Soviets close behind the Americans in the H-bomb race.
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Atoms for Peace speech
President Eisenhower proposes sharing nuclear technology for peaceful use before the UN General Assembly. The speech launches civilian nuclear cooperation and leads to the creation of the IAEA.
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Castle Bravo test
The largest American nuclear test yields 15 megatons, far beyond prediction, and showers fallout on Rongelap islanders and a Japanese fishing boat. The disaster galvanizes the global movement against atmospheric testing.
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Obninsk, the first grid-connected nuclear plant
A small Soviet reactor near Moscow becomes the first nuclear power plant to feed electricity into a grid. Atomic energy crosses from weapons work into civilian use.
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USS Nautilus puts to sea on nuclear power
The first nuclear-powered submarine gets underway from Groton, signaling the message 'Underway on nuclear power'. Naval propulsion becomes a major driver of reactor technology and of the arms race at sea.
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Calder Hall opens
Queen Elizabeth II opens Calder Hall, the first nuclear power station to deliver electricity at industrial scale. The plant also quietly produces plutonium for Britain's weapons program.
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IAEA founded
The International Atomic Energy Agency comes into being as the world's nuclear watchdog, an outgrowth of Atoms for Peace. Its safeguards inspections become the front line against diversion of civilian programs to weapons.
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Grapple X, Britain's hydrogen bomb
Britain achieves a true megaton-range thermonuclear explosion over Christmas Island. Success as a hydrogen power helps restore nuclear cooperation with the United States a year later.
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Shippingport reactor comes online
America's first full-scale commercial nuclear power plant synchronizes to the grid in Pennsylvania. Its pressurized water design, adapted from naval reactors, becomes the world standard.
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Construction of the Dimona reactor
With secret French help, Israel begins building a reactor and reprocessing complex in the Negev desert. Dimona becomes the heart of an undeclared weapons program, publicly exposed in late 1960.
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Gerboise Bleue
France detonates its first atomic bomb in the Algerian Sahara, becoming the fourth nuclear power. The test fulfills de Gaulle's demand for an independent deterrent outside American control.
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Tsar Bomba
The Soviet Union detonates a 50-megaton hydrogen bomb over Novaya Zemlya, the largest explosion ever made by humans. Built for intimidation rather than use, it marks the extreme of the arms race.
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Force de frappe goes on alert
The first Mirage IV bomber stands nuclear alert with an AN-11 bomb, making France's independent deterrent operational. De Gaulle's force de frappe anchors French defense policy for decades.
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China's first nuclear test, 596
China detonates a uranium bomb at Lop Nur, becoming the fifth nuclear power. Named for the month Moscow withdrew its aid, the test announces an arsenal built despite the Sino-Soviet split.
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Moruroa's first nuclear test
France detonates Aldebaran from a barge in the Moruroa lagoon, moving its testing from the Sahara to the Pacific. Nearly two hundred tests over thirty years leave lasting contamination and Polynesian resentment.
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China's hydrogen bomb test
China detonates a multi-megaton thermonuclear bomb only 32 months after its first atomic test, the fastest such leap of any nuclear power. The test confirms China as a full member of the thermonuclear club.
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Sweden abandons its nuclear weapons program
After two decades of weapons research, Sweden signs the Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear state. Public opposition and American pressure end one of the most advanced near-programs of the Cold War.
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Canopus, France's hydrogen bomb
France detonates its first thermonuclear device over Fangataufa Atoll, a 2.6-megaton blast. France becomes the fifth country to master the hydrogen bomb.
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Israel's policy of nuclear ambiguity
In a private understanding with President Nixon, Golda Meir commits Israel to neither testing nor declaring its weapons. The policy of opacity, never confirmed and never denied, holds to this day.
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Smiling Buddha
India detonates a nuclear device at Pokhran, calling it a peaceful nuclear explosion. Built with plutonium from a Canadian-supplied reactor, the test triggers global export controls on nuclear technology.
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Iraq buys the Osirak reactor
Iraq signs a contract with France for an Osiris-class research reactor and highly enriched uranium fuel. Saddam Hussein's interest in the deal feeds suspicion that Osirak is a step toward a bomb.
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A.Q. Khan founds the Kahuta enrichment program
Using centrifuge designs stolen from Europe, Abdul Qadeer Khan sets up Pakistan's uranium enrichment laboratories at Kahuta. The program, begun after India's 1974 test, becomes the core of Pakistan's bomb.
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Three Mile Island accident
A cooling failure melts part of a reactor core near Harrisburg, the worst accident in American commercial nuclear power. Little radiation escapes, but public trust collapses and new plant orders dry up for decades.
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Vela incident
An American Vela satellite detects a double flash near the Prince Edward Islands, the signature of a nuclear explosion. Widely suspected to be a joint Israeli and South African test, it has never been officially explained.
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South Africa completes its first nuclear device
The apartheid state secretly finishes its first gun-type uranium device, built with domestically enriched fuel. Six weapons follow over the next decade, never tested and never acknowledged.
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Israeli strike on the Osirak reactor
Israeli jets destroy Iraq's nearly finished Osirak reactor near Baghdad in Operation Opera. The raid sets the precedent of preventive strikes against nuclear programs, though Iraq's covert work continues underground.
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Vanunu reveals Israel's arsenal
The Sunday Times publishes photographs and testimony from Dimona technician Mordechai Vanunu, indicating Israel holds as many as 200 warheads. Mossad agents abduct him weeks later and Israel jails him for treason.
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Yongbyon reactor starts up
North Korea's indigenous 5-megawatt gas-graphite reactor begins operating at Yongbyon. Its spent fuel becomes the source of the plutonium for the country's first bombs.
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Switzerland ends its nuclear weapons program
The Swiss government dissolves its long-dormant working committee on nuclear armament, quietly closing a 43-year study of a Swiss bomb. The program never got beyond planning and stockpiled uranium.
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South Africa dismantles its arsenal
As apartheid winds down, F.W. de Klerk orders South Africa's six nuclear weapons dismantled and the program shut. It remains the only state to build a nuclear arsenal and then voluntarily destroy it.
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Semipalatinsk test site closed
President Nazarbayev shuts the Soviet Union's main test site, where over 450 nuclear explosions had exposed local populations to fallout. The closure, on the anniversary of the first Soviet test, becomes a symbol of Kazakh denuclearization.
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Iraq's secret bomb program exposed
IAEA inspectors entering Iraq after the Gulf War uncover a vast covert enrichment and weapons program that had survived the Osirak strike. The discovery reshapes international inspections and export controls.
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De Klerk reveals South Africa's bomb
President de Klerk tells parliament that South Africa built six nuclear weapons and destroyed them before joining the NPT. It is the first time any state publicly confesses to a completed secret arsenal.
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Agreed Framework freezes Yongbyon
The United States and North Korea sign a deal freezing the Yongbyon plutonium program in exchange for fuel oil and civilian reactors. The bargain holds for eight years before collapsing amid mutual accusations.
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Budapest Memorandum
also in Arms control: caging the weapons
Memorandum in which Russia, the United States, and Britain gave security assurances to Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan in exchange for giving up Soviet nuclear weapons. Russia's later invasions of Ukraine broke its commitments.
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Kazakhstan completes denuclearization
The last of more than 1,400 strategic warheads inherited from the Soviet Union leaves Kazakhstan for Russia. The country that hosted Semipalatinsk becomes a leading voice for disarmament.
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Last French test at Moruroa
France conducts its final nuclear test in the Pacific amid worldwide protests, then announces a permanent end to testing. The atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa are left with fractured geology and a contested health legacy.
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Ukraine transfers its last warheads
The last nuclear warheads stationed in Ukraine arrive in Russia for dismantlement, completing the pledge made at Budapest. Ukraine gives up roughly 1,900 strategic warheads it could not operationally control.
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Belarus transfers its last warheads
Belarus sends its final SS-25 missiles and warheads to Russia, the last Soviet nuclear weapons to leave the non-Russian republics. The withdrawal completes the denuclearization promised under the Budapest Memorandum.
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Pokhran-II tests
India detonates five devices at Pokhran, including a claimed thermonuclear design, and declares itself a nuclear weapons state. The tests end 24 years of restraint and provoke sanctions and a Pakistani response within weeks.
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Chagai-I, Pakistan's first nuclear tests
Pakistan detonates five devices in the Ras Koh Hills two weeks after India's tests, becoming the seventh declared nuclear power. The subcontinent's rivalry is now openly nuclear on both sides.
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Natanz enrichment site exposed
An Iranian opposition group reveals a secret uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and a heavy water plant at Arak. The disclosure opens two decades of inspections, sanctions, and negotiation over Iran's program.
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North Korea withdraws from the NPT
After the collapse of the Agreed Framework, North Korea announces its withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the only state ever to leave it. Yongbyon restarts and reprocessing resumes within months.
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Libya renounces its nuclear program
After secret talks with Britain and the United States, Muammar Gaddafi announces Libya will abandon its nuclear and chemical weapons programs. Centrifuges bought from the A.Q. Khan network are crated and flown out for destruction.
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A.Q. Khan network exposed
Abdul Qadeer Khan confesses on Pakistani television to selling centrifuge technology and bomb designs to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. The world's largest private proliferation ring is dismantled, and Khan is pardoned the next day.
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North Korea's first nuclear test
North Korea detonates a small plutonium device underground at Punggye-ri, becoming the ninth state to test a nuclear weapon. The UN Security Council answers with the first of many sanctions resolutions.
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Israeli strike on al-Kibar
Israeli aircraft destroy a secret reactor under construction in the Syrian desert, built with North Korean help. Both sides keep silent for years; Israel only acknowledges the raid in 2018.
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Fordow enrichment site revealed
The leaders of the United States, Britain, and France disclose a secret Iranian enrichment plant buried in a mountain near Qom. The fortified site hardens Western suspicion and becomes central to later negotiations.
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Stuxnet attack on Natanz
A sophisticated computer worm, later attributed to the United States and Israel, is discovered after destroying centrifuges at Natanz. Stuxnet is the first known cyberweapon to cause physical damage to a nuclear program.
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Fukushima Daiichi disaster
A magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami knock out cooling at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, melting three reactor cores. The worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl forces mass evacuations and prompts several countries to phase out nuclear power.
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North Korea's thermonuclear test
North Korea's sixth and largest nuclear test yields well over 100 kilotons, consistent with its claim of a hydrogen bomb for an ICBM. The test marks the country's arrival as a de facto thermonuclear power.
Further reading
- Life in Classrooms Philip W. Jackson 1968 cited in 1
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