By R.Swathi
What is common between Nevada National Security Site, Novaya Zemlya and Semipalatinsk, the Pacific Proving Grounds, Punggye-ri, Pokhran, Chagai Mountains, and Lop Nor?
They have all borne the scars of nuclear testing.
Nevada alone has witnessed 1,030 nuclear tests, while Novaya Zemlya and Semipalatinsk together saw 715. By contrast, India’s Pokhran has seen just three. The sheer scale of testing in Nevada and Semipalatinsk has left their soil, water, and air dangerously contaminated with radioactive pollution.
As I walked into the theatre to watch Oppenheimer, my excitement soon gave way to grief when the film portrayed the physicist’s dawning realisation of what he had unleashed. That was 1945—the year of the first nuclear test, swiftly followed by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with “Little Boy” and “Fat Man.” The Soviet Union was not far behind, conducting its first test on August 29, 1949.
In 1952, the USA became the first nation to test a hydrogen bomb. On April 2, 1954, India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was the first statesman to call for a “standstill agreement” on nuclear testing—a plea that was largely ignored. In the following decades, France (1960) and China (1964) joined the nuclear club, followed by the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, and North Korea.
A significant turning point came with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Semipalatinsk site, which Kazakhstan inherited, was officially closed on August 29, 1991, by President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Kazakhstan has since championed the global anti-nuclear movement, spearheading a UN resolution that led to the unanimous declaration of August 29 as the International Day against Nuclear Tests.
Elsewhere, Ukraine and Belarus inherited another nuclear legacy—the Chernobyl disaster. To this day, large portions of the area remain uninhabitable. Yet, nature, in its resilience, has offered a glimmer of hope: scientists have discovered a black fungus that absorbs and converts gamma radiation into energy through radiosynthesis. This discovery has led to research into whether this unique life form could help in decontaminating radioactive areas and even be used for radiation protection in space.
Nature’s solutions, however, do not absolve us of the responsibility to protect our ecosystem. On this International Day against Nuclear Tests, Adyar Times joins the world in remembering the silent victims of nuclear ambition and in hoping for a future where human progress no longer comes at such a staggering cost.
In the guise of Nuclear deterrent every country is trying to enter the nuclear club. One mad man is sufficient to annihilate the mankind. God Save us.