Outlook Web Desk
A report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has said that all nuclear-armed nations continued to modernise their nuclear arsenals and several of them deployed new nuclear-capable weapon systems in 2023.
In total, nine countries in the world possess nuclear weapons: Russia, United States, China, France, United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea. The US was the first country to manufacture nuclear weapons
According to the SIPRI Report, Russia and the US together possess almost 90 per cent of all nuclear weapons.
Russia's predecessor state, the Soviet Union, conducted its first successful nuclear weapon test, followed by the test of the first Soviet thermonuclear bomb in 1953
The first of China's nuclear weapons tests took place in 1964. Project 596 was the first nuclear weapons test conducted by the People's Republic of China, detonated on October 16, 1964, at the Lop Nur test site.
In 1952, the United Kingdom became the third country to develop and test nuclear weapons, and is one of the five nuclear-weapon states under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
In 1960, France became the fourth nuclear-armed state when it tested its first large nuclear device in Algeria, then a French colony
On May 18, 1974, India conducted its first nuclear test in Pokhran, code-named Operation Smiling Buddha. India currently has more stored nuclear warheads than Pakistan
The Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) conducted five underground nuclear tests at the Chagai test site on May 28, 1998
Israel does not admit nor deny having nuclear weapons, and maintains it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Israel is universally believed to possess nuclear arms stored in a partially disassembled state, according to reports
North Korea has a military nuclear weapons program and, as of 2024, is estimated to have an arsenal of approximately 50 nuclear weapons