To increase the destructiveness and lethality of their nuclear forces, and to send warnings to their adversaries, nuclear-armed nations have carried out more than 2,000 nuclear test explosions around the world since 1945.

Releasing vast quantities of radiation into the atmosphere and oceans, these toxic experiments have caused epidemics of cancers and other chronic illnesses. Vast swathes of land remain unsafe for habitation, even decades after test sites were closed.

In the US state of New Mexico just three weeks before the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US government conducted the world’s first nuclear test explosion, code-named “Trinity”. Its giant fireball turned the sands into glass, illuminated the surrounding mountains and sent a mushroom cloud of radioactive debris 12 kilometres into the sky.

The consequences for the test site workers and nearby communities were devastating – and continue to be felt to this day.

The same has been the case for people working at or living downwind or downstream of more than 60 other nuclear test sites across the globe, from the deserts of Australia and Algeria to the steppes of Kazakhstan and the atolls of the Pacific.