Sunday, April 26, 2009
China's first hydrogen bomb test
The secrets of China’s nuclear weapons testing are being revealed now that many army veterans are speaking out about the dangerous work they were ordered to perform during the Cold War. Operating in the remote Gobi desert, a special military detachment known as Unit 8023 was assigned to perform tasks as part of nuclear tests, such as picking up radioactive debris with their bare hands, cleaning off planes that had flown through mushroom clouds, and riding horseback toward explosions with only gas masks to serve as protective gear.
Research indicates the Chinese government conducted a total of 46 nuclear tests around Lop Nur in Xinjiang province, 1,500 miles west of Beijing. Of these tests, 23 were in the atmosphere, 22 underground and one failed. They included thermonuclear blasts, neutron bombs and an atomic bomb covertly tested for Pakistan on May 26, 1990.
Professor Jun Takada, a Japanese physicist, has calculated that up to 1.48 million people were exposed to fallout from the atmospheric tests, and that almost 190,000 may have died from diseases linked to radiation. Numerous accounts have been reported of soldiers dying of strange and rare diseases, and of children born with mysterious cancers.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Revolt Stirs Among China’s Nuclear Ghosts (by Michael Sheridan, Times of London)
Report: 190K Dead from Chinese Radiation (United Press International)
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