Timeline of the Nuclear Age
Events of the...
- 2000
- March 14 - Russia and the Netherlands sign a cooperative agreement for the dismantling of old Russian nuclear warheads and nuclear submarines.
- April -The Russian Federation ratifies the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II).
- August 12 - The Russian submarine Kursk sinks in the Barent Sea. All 118 crew members are killed. Several bodies are recovered; the exact cause of the sinking is unknown.
- December - The last of the reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant are shut down.
- 2001
- President George W. Bush moves forward in developing a National Missile Defense system. Russia and China oppose its development.
- June 29 - Efforts to raise the Russian submarine Kursk begin.
- August - Yucca Mountain in Nevada is initially approved to become a storage facility for high-level nuclear waste.
- September 11 - Terrorists hijack four commercial aircraft. The Pentagon is damaged by one plane, two planes strike the World Trade Center, destroying both towers, and the fourth plane crashes in rural Pennsylvania.
- October - The Kursk is raised and brought to port.
- December 13 - The United States announces that it will withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.
- 2002
- May 24 - Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty is signed between the U.S. and Russia. Each nation would be limited to 1,700 to 2,200 strategic nuclear warheads apiece.
- October 16 - North Korea tells U.S. officials it has developed a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of the 1994 agreement.
- December 21 - The IAEA says North Korea has disabled surveillance devices the agency had placed at the five-megawatt Yongbyon research reactor.
- 2003
- January 10 - North Korea announces it will withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
- February 5 - North Korea announces that it had reactivated its nuclear facilities and is going ahead with their operation "on a normal footing."
- February 9 - Iran acknowledges for the first time that it has uranium ore reserves and that it will reprocess the spent fuel. But it insists the nuclear program was designed solely for civilian use.
- February 27 - The United States says North Korea has reactivated its five-megawatt nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.
- May 12 - North Korea backs out of the only remaining legal obligation blocking its nuclear ambitions, a 1992 pact with South Korea to keep the peninsula free of nuclear weapons.
- May 14 - Russia's lower house of parliament votes to ratify the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (Moscow Treaty).
- May 29 - Russia's upper house of parliament votes to ratify the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (Moscow Treaty).
- July 9 - Ukraine will get $85 million to build a new shield over Chernobyl to stabilize the old "sarcophagus" covering the gaping hole in reactor No. 4.
- August 26 - U.N. inspectors have found traces of highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium at an Iranian nuclear facility.
- August 26-29 - Six-party talks aimed at ending the standoff over North Korea's suspected nuclear weapons program take place in China.
- September 9 - Edward Teller, "father of the H-bomb" dies.
- September 25 - The IAEA team in Iran has found additional traces of weapons-grade uranium in Iran.
- September 26 - Afghanistan signs, ratifies Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
- October 29 - Iran delivers a report to the IAEA to allay international concern about its nuclear program.
- November 10 - The International Atomic Energy Agency reports that Iran has acknowledged producing a small amount of plutonium, a material useable in a nuclear bomb.
- December 18 - Iran signs Protocol on Snap UN Nuclear Inspections.
- December 19 - Libya has admitted trying to develop weapons of mass destruction. It is discovered that Libya's nuclear weapons program is "much further advanced" than U.S. and British intelligence agencies had thought, and includes centrifuges and a uranium-enrichment program, all necessary components in making a nuclear bomb.
- 2004
- January 10 - U.S. Group to Visit North Korea, tours Yongbyon, the probable location of the plant that is reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods into plutonium.
- January 13 - Libya ratifies the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
- January 27 - Pakistani investigators have concluded that at least two of the country's top nuclear scientists -- including Abdul Qadeer Khan, considered the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb -- provided unauthorized technical assistance to Iran's nuclear weapons program in the late 1980s.
- January 31 - Pakistan fires A. Q. Khan, the founder of their nuclear program; he is later pardoned by the Pakistani President.
- February 15 - Drawings of a nuclear warhead that Libya surrendered as part of its decision to renounce weapons of mass destruction are discovered to be of 1960s Chinese design, but likely came from Pakistan.
- February 20 - The International Atomic Energy Agency has said Libya managed to produce a small amount of plutonium using technology acquired on the black market. The report does not specify the amount.
- February 25-28 - Six-party talks aimed at ending the standoff over North Korea's suspected nuclear weapons program take place in China.
- March 10 - Libya to allow the IAEA to perform unannounced inspections of atomic facilities.
- March 29 - Pakistan rejects a request to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect its nuclear facilities.
- April 2 - International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found traces of bomb-grade uranium in Iran at sites other than the two already named.
- June 22 - India and Pakistan set up a nuclear 'hotline'.
- June 23 - Talks resume with North Korea over its suspected nuclear weapons program.
- September 2 - South Korea reveals that it had secretly conducted an experiment more than 20 years ago with traces of plutonium.
- November 28 - Iran pledges to suspend all activities related to plutonium reprocessing and the enrichment of uranium in a deal with the European Union. Iran's nuclear program has been the focus of much international pressure.
- 2005
- January 1 - IAEA finds evidence of secret nuclear experiments in Egypt that could be used in weapons programs.
- January 22 - North Korea announces it is a nuclear weapons state.
- February 23 - Canada declines to participate with the U.S. ballistic missile defense program.
- February 24 - President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin plan to announce a package of measures today to counter the threat of nuclear terrorism.
- February 28 - Iran, Russia sign nuclear fuel agreement that is key to bringing Tehran's first reactor online by mid-2006.
- March 7 - Hans Bethe, Nobel Prize winner and former Head of the Theoretical Division during the Manhattan Project dies at the age of 98.
- March 10 - Pakistan acknowledges that A.Q. Khan sold Iran high speed centrifuges for uranium separation.
- April 4 - U.N. Committee approves Nuclear Terrorism Treaty.
- July 29 - Russia announced the destruction of the final SS-18 Satan missile launcher.
- July 31 - Iran resumes nuclear activities.
- August 6 - India and Pakistan announce the establishment of an emergency nuclear hotline and notification of future missile tests.
- August 16 - Russia stops use of rail-based missiles.
- August 24 - Pakistan acknowledges that A.Q. Khan supplied North Korea with centrifuges and their designs.
- September 19 - North Korea agrees to give up all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and return to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
- October 7 - The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its head Mohamed ElBaradei win the Nobel Peace Prize.
- Novmeber 16 - Iran starts converting new uranium batch.
- November 18 - Iran admits having nuclear black market data.
- 2006
- January 2 - Iran rejects a Russian offer to produce nuclear fuel in its plants for Iran, the latest effort to resolve a diplomatic impasse over Tehran's nuclear program.
- January 9 - Iran says nuclear research has resumed.
- February 13 - Iran "resumes" nuclear enrichment.
- March 2 - India and the United States seal a landmark civilian nuclear cooperation pact.
- April 22 - IAEA reports that Iran has enriched uranium.
- October 8 - North Korea tests a nuclear device, its yield was quite low (about 1 kiloton).
- 2007
- May 11 - Iran Turns Away IAEA Inspectors, continuing the ongoing questions about Iran's nuclear program
- June 5 - U.S. to Allow START Pact to Lapse
