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list of states with nuclear weapons
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Thermonuclear warhead
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Thermonuclear warhead
Thermonuclear warhead The blast from a primary fission component triggers a secondary fusion explosion in a thermonuclear bomb or warhead.

list of states with nuclear weapons

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Written by
Adam Zeidan
Adam Zeidan is an Assistant Managing Editor, having joined Encyclopædia Britannica in 2018. He covers a range of topics related primarily to the Middle East and North Africa.
Adam Zeidan
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Article History

Since the first atomic bomb was produced in 1945, only a handful of states have obtained nuclear weapons. Nuclear proliferation was an early concern of the Cold War, and the fear of nuclear war led to the conclusion of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968. At that time, only five or six countries had developed nuclear weapons, while the treaty created disincentives for other countries to produce them. India and Pakistan, which were never signatories of the NPT, have since acquired nuclear warheads of their own; South Africa also produced nuclear devices beginning in 1979, but it later dismantled them before joining the NPT in 1991. One country, North Korea, has left the NPT and subsequently developed nuclear weaponry. Some signatories of the NPT have been accused of noncompliance; none has successfully produced a nuclear weapon, apart from those that already had them, although Iran reached the verge of nuclear breakout in 2023. The former Soviet states of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine inherited nuclear weapons after the Soviet Union’s collapse, but in 1992 they agreed either to destroy their nuclear weapons or hand them over to Russia.

Below is a list of states with nuclear weapons, categorized according to states that are known to currently possess nuclear weapons, those believed to possess nuclear weapons without public acknowledgment, and those that formerly possessed nuclear weapons but no longer do. Within those categories, they are listed according to the year of their first nuclear weapons test.

Current states with declared nuclear weapons

Other states believed to possess nuclear weapons

States that formerly possessed nuclear weapons

  • South Africa (1979 [unconfirmed]; disarmament completed in 1991)
  • Kazakhstan (inherited from the Soviet Union in 1991; disarmament completed in 1995)
  • Ukraine (inherited from the Soviet Union in 1991; disarmament completed in 1996)
  • Belarus (inherited from the Soviet Union in 1991; disarmament completed in 1996)
Adam Zeidan