Project 596

Uncommon card · No. 172327

Project 596 (Miss Qiu, Chinese: 邱小姐; pinyin: Qiū Xiǎojiě, as the callsign; Chic-1 by the US intelligence agencies) was the first nuclear test of the nuclear weapons program of China, detonated on 16 October 1964, at the Lop Nur test site in Xinjiang. It was an implosion fission device containing about 15 kg weapons-grade uranium (U-235), produced at the Lanzhou enrichment plant. It had a yield of 22 kilotons, comparable to the Soviet Union's first nuclear bomb RDS-1 in 1949 and the American Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in 1945. Key figures in the device's design included Deng Jiaxian, Qian Sanqiang, and Peng Huanwu. With the test, China became the world's fifth nuclear-armed state. This was the first of 45 successful nuclear tests China conducted between 1964 and 1996, all of which occurred at the Lop Nur test site. The atomic bomb is now honored under China's "Two Bombs, One Satellite". Premier Zhou Enlai announced the test the same day, during which he criticized US "nuclear...

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