The 528 atmospheric tests alone had a destructive force equal to 29,000 Hiroshima bombs.

The sheer scale of the devastation is staggering. Even those that have been closed for decades and partially cleaned up remain uninhabitable. More than 60 sites around the world bear the scars of these tests. вЂњThe legacy of nuclear testing is nothing but destruction,вЂќ reflected the UN secretary-general, AntГіnio Guterres, in 2019. In the seven and a half decades since that fateful July morning in 1945, at least eight nations have carried out a total of 2,056 nuclear tests вЂ“ around one-quarter of them in the atmosphere вЂ“ causing long-term harm to human health and the environment. Its giant fireball turned the sands into glass, illuminated the surrounding mountains, and sent a mushroom cloud of radioactive debris 12 kilometres into the sky. In the New Mexico desert just three weeks before the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States conducted the worldвЂ™s first nuclear test explosion, code-named вЂњTrinityвЂќ. The victims of these toxic experiments must not be forgotten вЂ“ and their demands for justice and assistance must be met. Large swathes of land remain radioactive and unsafe for habitation, even decades after test sites were closed. From 1945 to 2017, more than two thousand nuclear test explosions were conducted around the world, resulting in epidemics of cancers and other chronic illnesses.

Bikini atoll nuclear test