China is discreetly rebuilding an old military base for nuclear testing. Satellite images analyzed by the newspaper ‘The New York Times’ show that there is suddenly renewed activity in a remote desert, where Beijing detonated its very first atomic bomb almost sixty years ago. Experts are concerned.
Lob Nuur is the name of the old base and it is located in the dried-out bed of a huge salt lake on the western edge of the Gobi Desert. Independent experts have been concerned for years about the possible preparations for new activities at the site and Beijing’s “lack of transparency” about it.
New satellite photos appear to confirm those fears. The images show that more than thirty buildings have been renovated or added to the main complex at the nuclear site over the past six years. Dozens of kilometers of new roads, fences and power lines were added, and at least one of the horizontal tunnels previously used to conduct nuclear tests is being built in a mountain.
Other images show drilling rigs making vertical holes in the ground in a new 25 square kilometer area – about 50 kilometers to the east. This may indicate new underground test locations. One of those boreholes would be at least half a kilometer deep. That is worrying, because deep vertical shafts allow for heavier nuclear tests than the old, shallow horizontal tunnels in the mountains.
The new developments were discovered by Renny Babiarz, a former US Pentagon intelligence analyst. He is an expert on China’s nuclear program and reconnaissance missions using satellite images. Babiarz believes tests in deep vertical shafts could accelerate China’s efforts to develop new types of nuclear weapons.
Other experts follow his lead and warn that China is engaged in a major modernization of its nuclear arsenal. That could lead to a new arms race and nuclear rivalry.
Tong Zhao of the American think tank ‘Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’ confirms that everything indicates that China is planning new nuclear tests. Siegfried S. Hecker of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico (the main nuclear weapons research facility in the US) describes the activity at Lob Nuur as “unusual”. “The Americans and the Russians have continued their activities at their test sites, but it is nothing like this,” he said in The New York Times.
Sources in the US intelligence services acknowledge that China may be preparing for new nuclear tests in Lob Nuur, but insist that this does not mean they will be carried out effectively. It could just be about preparations, so that action can be taken quickly if necessary.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry denies that anything is going on in Lob Nuur and emphasizes that China adheres to its commitment not to carry out any more nuclear tests.
The first nuclear test in Lob Nuur dates back to 1964 and followed a decision by Chinese dictator Mao Zedong to build an atomic bomb like some other countries. The first underground test was conducted in 1969 and the first in a vertical shaft (which could keep the radiation underground) in 1978.
Cold War
After the Cold War – in the 1990s – activities in Lob Nuur were phased out. Until the current Chinese President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012. He sees nuclear weapons as a tool to make China a respected and feared world power again, on a par with the US.
According to the US Department of Defense, Beijing had more than 500 operational nuclear warheads as of May this year. It estimates that there could be double that number by 2030.
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