TNN, Beijing :
China is revealing for the first time how it researched and conducted its first nuclear test in 1964. Most of the workers on the atomic bomb project did not know what they were working on.
“Every workshop was separated, some produced parts and some were in charge of assembly,” Wang Suide, a 76-year-old former soldier, told Xinhua half a century after China detonated its first atomic bomb. He came to know he was working on the bomb project only after he heard on TV that China had become the fifth nuclear power. “I love to read newspapers, watch documentaries and the military channel,” said Wang,
who also enjoys gardening.
A government news release at that time said, “China exploded an atomic bomb at 3pm on Oct 16, 1964, thereby successfully carrying out its first nuclear test.”
Some of the old buildings in the research and test locations now serve as an education center after the nuclear base was shut down in the 1990s, Xinhua reported. The government has housed 500 workers of the first nuclear plant along with their families in Hefei, capital of Anhui province.
Seventy-three-year-old Dong Dianju worked for 34 years at the atomic bomb test base that was also the location of the Factory No 221 (the state-owned site) in Qinghai province.
“The weeds were taller than people, you could not even open your eyes when winds blew,” he said about the time he arrived at the remote, thinly-populated area in 1958. The temperature reached -40 degree Celsius in winter, and one took to winter clothes after August. Speaking to Xinhua, Ren Tie, described how he lost all his teeth by age 50 due to radiation exposure. He was among those tasked to clean the field after the test.
China is revealing for the first time how it researched and conducted its first nuclear test in 1964. Most of the workers on the atomic bomb project did not know what they were working on.
“Every workshop was separated, some produced parts and some were in charge of assembly,” Wang Suide, a 76-year-old former soldier, told Xinhua half a century after China detonated its first atomic bomb. He came to know he was working on the bomb project only after he heard on TV that China had become the fifth nuclear power. “I love to read newspapers, watch documentaries and the military channel,” said Wang,
who also enjoys gardening.
A government news release at that time said, “China exploded an atomic bomb at 3pm on Oct 16, 1964, thereby successfully carrying out its first nuclear test.”
Some of the old buildings in the research and test locations now serve as an education center after the nuclear base was shut down in the 1990s, Xinhua reported. The government has housed 500 workers of the first nuclear plant along with their families in Hefei, capital of Anhui province.
Seventy-three-year-old Dong Dianju worked for 34 years at the atomic bomb test base that was also the location of the Factory No 221 (the state-owned site) in Qinghai province.
“The weeds were taller than people, you could not even open your eyes when winds blew,” he said about the time he arrived at the remote, thinly-populated area in 1958. The temperature reached -40 degree Celsius in winter, and one took to winter clothes after August. Speaking to Xinhua, Ren Tie, described how he lost all his teeth by age 50 due to radiation exposure. He was among those tasked to clean the field after the test.
