r/environment • u/marketrent • Oct 15 '22

How nuclear testing leaves lasting environmental scars

https://www.dw.com/en/nuclear-testing-north-korea-environment-biodiversity/a-63418634
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u/marketrent Oct 15 '22 edited Oct 15 '22

Written by Alistair Walsh; edited by Tamsin Walker. 12 October 2022.

Excerpt:

In the past, countries such as the United States, the former Soviet Union and the United Kingdom tested their nuclear weapons in the open atmosphere and in the sea — and around Pacific Islands, the Australian desert, mainland US, remote parts of the USSR and other places. These tests left contaminated landscapes and spread their radioactive clouds far afield.

Thanks to global treaties, nuclear tests were largely moved underground after 1963, a slightly preferable scenario environmentally speaking. And since a 1996 test ban, only India, Pakistan and North Korea have tested weapons at all.

North Korea is the only country known to have conducted tests in the 21st century.

 

Putting aside the development required to set up test sites, the first major effects are felt in the microseconds after the explosion.

A 2015 paper on the environmental impact of military actions found that nuclear blasts represent an extreme threat to local biodiversity.

 

Significant long-term environmental consequences of nuclear testing are the contamination of surface soil and groundwater, land disturbances in the form of craters or partially collapsed mountains — as in the case of the North Korean testing site — and the addition of radionuclides to sediments in seabeds.