Earthquake Recorded in Kazakhstan in 2020 May Have Been China’s Nuclear Test

A senior U.S. official has disclosed new details about what he says was an underground nuclear test conducted by China in June 2020, Orda.kz reports, citing Reuters

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Yeaw said a seismic station in Kazakhstan (PS23) detected a magnitude 2.75 underground event at the time, and that its source was near the Lop Nor test site in western China.

«There is practically no possibility that it was anything other than an explosion — a single explosion,»Yeaw said while speaking at the Hudson Institute 

He argued the signal did not resemble an earthquake or an industrial mining blast and said its characteristics matched what would be expected from a nuclear test. He added that China could have used «decoupling» — detonating a device in a large underground cavity — to reduce the strength of seismic waves.

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) said it recorded two small seismic events 12 seconds apart, but that the available data was insufficient to determine their nature with certainty.

China’s embassy in the United States rejected the allegations. A spokesperson, Liu Pengyu, called them «political manipulation» aimed at achieving «nuclear hegemony,» and said China has not conducted nuclear tests, noting its last officially declared underground test was in 1996.

Earlier, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev wrote on X about nuclear testing, saying Kazakhstan has suffered some of the worst consequences of nuclear weapons tests and that such a tragedy must not happen again. He urged stronger peace efforts, international cooperation, nuclear disarmament, and an end to nuclear tests.

Separately, Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Health said Japan will provide a grant of more than 1 billion yen (about $7 million) to purchase medical equipment for the University Hospital in Semey, which treats victims of nuclear tests.

Original author: Asel Turar