The United States and other nuclear powers are now moving closer to resuming nuclear weapons tests, decades after testing ended. This highly disturbing trend must be halted.
Since the atomic age, 2,056 nuclear weapons have been detonated, 528 of them above the ground. The United States and Soviet Union accounted for about 85% of these tests. The explosive power of atmospheric tests equaled 29,000 Hiroshima bombs. Airborne radioactive fallout circled the globe, re-entered the environment through precipitation, and entered human bodies through food and water.
Cold War bomb testing was part of a massive increase in the number of nuclear weapons, which peaked at more than 60,000. Kansas City plays a major part in their production, with the Kansas City National Security Campus manufacturing more than 80% of the non-nuclear components that go into our country’s stockpile.
After nuclear war as barely avoided during the Cuban missile crisis, public pressure convinced leaders to ban all above-ground tests in 1963 — a treaty that has never been violated.