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Timeline of the Nuclear Age
Events of the...
- 1990
- June 1 - President Bush and President Gorbachev sign new protocols to the Threshold Test Ban treaty.
- September 25 - U.S. ratifies the Threshold Test Ban Treaty.
- September 27 - The last Pershing II missile is removed from West Germany
- December 11 - The Threshold Test Ban Treaty enters into force.
- 1991
- July 31 - President Bush and President Gorbachev sign the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). The Treaty calls for the elimination of almost 50 percent of the nuclear warheads carried by ballistic missiles.
- December 5 - Bush signs the Missile Defense Act of 1991, which mandates the Department of Defense develop a missile defense system.
- Communism falls across Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union is replaced by the Commonwealth of Independent States (C.I.S.).
- 1992
- June 1 - Strategic Air Command (SAC) is deactivated. A new, unified command, STRATCOM (Strategic Command) was activated in its place and controls the nuclear weapons assets of the United States.
- The START treaty is ratified by the U.S. Senate.
- Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus agree in principle to the START treaty.
- August 3 - France officially signs the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
- 1993
- January 3 - Bush and President Yeltsin sign the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II), which reduces their nations' arsenals of long-range nuclear weapons to 3,000-3,500 and eliminates all MIRVed land-based missiles over the next ten years.
- March - Prime Minister F.W. de Klerk announces that South Africa had successfully developed nuclear weapons, and then voluntarily destroyed them before signing the NPT in 1991.
- 1994
- Attempts to smuggle nuclear material from C.I.S. are stopped.
- Secret nuclear testing on humans is revealed by both the U.S. and C.I.S.
- North Korea is suspected to be building nuclear weapons; they threaten to withdraw from the IAEA.
- 1995
- May 11 - 178 nations renew the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
- May 15 - China conducts an underground nuclear test.
- August - President Clinton announces a total ban on all U.S. nuclear weapon testing.
- September 5 - France resumes nuclear testing in the South Pacific. A total of six nuclear tests are conducted.
- 1996
- January 29 - French President Chirac announces an end to French nuclear tests.
- April 11 - The Treaty of Pelindaba is signed by 49 of the 53 members of the Organization of African Unity. It creates an African nuclear-weapons-free zone.
- June 8 - China conducts a nuclear test at the Lop Nur test site.
- September 11 - United Nations approves the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
- November 26 -The last of the nuclear warheads stationed in Belarus were finally removed to Russia.
- 1997
- March - At least 35 workers are contaminated with minor radiation after a fire and explosion occurred at a reprocessing plant at Tokaimura, Japan.
- July 2 - U.S. begins a round of sub-critical nuclear related tests at the Nevada Test Site.
- December 22 - U.S. implodes the last Minuteman II missile silo.
- 1998
- February 24 - France's National Assembly votes unanimously to ratify the CTBT.
- May 11 - India conducts three underground nuclear tests, its first in 24 years. One of the tests is a thermonuclear weapon.
- May 13 - India conducts two more nuclear tests.
- May 28 - Pakistan conducts five nuclear tests in response to India's nuclear tests.
- May 30 - Pakistan conducts its sixth nuclear weapons test. The explosion is in the 1 to 5 kiloton range.
- 1999
- July 23 - President Bill Clinton signs the National Missile Defense act and says threat, cost, technological status of national missile defense and adherence to a renegotiated ABM treaty are the four criteria in making his decision to deploy such a system.
- September 30 - An accident at the uranium processing plant at Tokaimura, Japan exposes fifty-five workers to radiation.
- October 13 - U.S. Senate fails to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
- October 15 - First of 150 Minuteman III Missile silos destroyed.
