An American official says seismic station in Kazakhstan detected magnitude 2.75 explosion at China’s Lop Nur test grounds
By Catholics for Catholics
A high-ranking U.S. official disclosed on Tuesday what he said were novel specifics of an underground nuclear test blast that China purportedly performed in June 2020.
Christopher Yeaw, Assistant Secretary of State said during an event at the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington that a far-off seismic station in Kazakhstan measured an “explosion” of magnitude 2.75 located 450 miles (720 km) away at the Lop Nor test grounds in western China on June 22, 2020.
“I’ve looked at additional data since then. There is very little possibility I would say that it is anything but an explosion, a singular explosion,” Yeaw said, adding that data was not consistent with mining detonations.
“It’s also entirely not consistent with an earthquake,” he added. “It is… what you would expect with a nuclear explosive test.”
But China’s embassy in Washington has denied the Trump administration’s claim, telling NBC News that the report is “political manipulation,” and the U.S. is “evading its own nuclear disarmament responsibilities.”
“China urges the U.S. to reaffirm the five nuclear-weapon states’ commitment on refraining from nuclear tests, uphold the global consensus against nuclear tests, and take concrete steps to safeguard the international nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime,” spokesperson Liu Pengyu told the outlet.
Nevertheless, U.S. officials warned that the Chinese government may be planning tests in the “hundreds of tons” range — a scale that stresses that country’s growing nuclear modernization and complicates efforts to draw Beijing into arms control talks.
Thomas DiNanno, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said lately that America has proof that China performed an explosive nuclear test at its Lop Nur site.
“I can reveal that the U.S. government is aware that China has conducted nuclear explosive tests, including preparing for tests with designated yields in the hundreds of tons,” DiNanno said during remarks at the United Nations Conference on Disarmament.
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