After Silo Field, China Builds New Tunnel at Nuclear Test Site

WASHINGTON – China appears to be expanding its sprawling nuclear weapons testing complex in the country’s western desert. Satellite image suggesting the possibility of new tunnels being excavated and new roads added at the site known as Lop Nur, where China has tested its nuclear weapons in the past.

“This is a new construction linked to an area that has in the past supported nuclear test activities,” said Renny Babiarz, vice president for analysis and operations at AllSource Analysis, a private geospatial analysis firm that looked at the tunnel using satellite imagery from commercial firm Planet. as quoted from NPR, Saturday (31/7/2021).

But Babiarz added that it was still unclear what the tunnel would be used for. China has not done nuclear test full-scale since the 1990s, when China and other major world nuclear powers signed a moratorium on voluntary testing. Government of China, and other countries including United States of America (USA), continues to test non-nuclear components of nuclear weapons which are sometimes carried out underground.

News of this new tunnel comes after two different research groups discovered a giant nuclear missile silo field under construction in another part of the country earlier this month.

“Over the past year and a half, China has built at least two large facilities, each with more than 100 missile silos,” said Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey, who announced the first field discovery on July 2.

Also read: China Builds 145 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Silos That Can Reach US

“China had 18 silos before this,” he added.

Lewis noted that even with the newly invented missile silo, China’s nuclear power remains much smaller than America’s.

“We’re working on more than 200 silos, which is something,” he said.

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