More than 1, 000 ex-servicemen say their lives were destroyed after the UK carried out a series of nuclear weapons tests in mainland Australia, the Montebello islands off the west Australian coast and on Christmas Island, in the Pacific, between 1952 and 1958.
While the treaty has not entered into force, the world still uses the treaty's monitoring system (the CTBT Organizations International Monitoring System) to detect nuclear-weapons tests.
CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Why we need to test nuclear weapons
The ongoing conflict in Kashmir - a simple question of sovereignty that has spawned two wars between Pakistan and India since 1947 - took on added significance earlier this year when both nations conducted underground tests of nuclear weapons.
He suggests a recommitment by the nuclear powers not to test their weapons--there have been no nuclear tests since 1996--in exchange for a commitment by all nations to stop enriching uranium.
The 1998 tests have since given nuclear weapons an extended half-life.
Repeated U.S. government analyses have established that as long as the United States relies upon nuclear weapons for its security, it is going to have to conduct periodic tests to ensure that such weapons are reliable, effective and safe.
The theory is that by so doing, other nations will be deterred from conducting nuclear tests or otherwise embarking upon nuclear weapons programs.
But there are two serious questions that worry genuine doubters: can America's nuclear weapons be kept safe and effective without explosive tests, and can the promise of a comprehensive test ban be comprehensively verified?
These steps include the completion of a new strategic weapons treaty with Russia, a rebalancing of US nuclear policy towards a reduction in the potential use of nuclear weapons and their development, and a commitment to ask the US Senate to ratify the treaty banning nuclear tests.
According to Brahma Chellaney, a noted expert on nuclear and security issues at the Center for Policy Research in Delhi, "threshold" is not a technical term but an expression coined by analysts to describe countries that have successfully conducted weapons tests but have not declared themselves to be nuclear states.
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