‘Twenty-one nuclear tests in 1986’

Press, 23 February 1987, Page 29

‘Twenty-one nuclear tests in 1986’

NZPA-Reuter Stockholm There were 21 nuclear test explosions worldwide during 1986, the lowest number since 1960, said Sweden’s National Defence Research Institute, (F.0.A.). The marked drop in numbers — from 30 in 1985 and 55 the year before — was mainly because of a voluntary ban on testing imposed by the Soviet Union in July, 1985, the F.O.A. said in its preliminary survey of last year’s tests.

The United States was responsible for most tests, exploding 12 nuclear devices at its Nevada range last year compared

with 14 the year before. France exploded eight nuclear devices at its Mururoa Atoll testing site in the South Pacific, the same as in 1985, and Britain made one nuclear test in Nevada both last year and the year before. India and China did not explode nuclear devices during 1986, the F.O.A. figures show. Moscow has said the Soviet moratorium will end immediately after the first United States test explosion of 1987. The “New York Times’’ quoted senior Government officials as saying a device was scheduled to be tested on February 5. The F.O.A. data is col-

lected at its Hagfors seismic testing station, founded in 1969 by former Disarmament Minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Alva Myrdai.

It is one of the major peace projects sponsored by neutral Sweden, which has consistently offered to play an official part in monitoring the superpower nuclear balance.

In Sweden’s budget proposal two million crowns ($558,000) were set aside to investigate the possibility of using a satellite, dubbed the peace satellite, to monitor international adherence to disarmament agreements.