Nuclear Testing: Pakistan conducts an underground test in the Kharan Desert. It is reported to be a plutonium device with yield of 20kt TNT equivalent.

The Kharan Desert (Urdu: ) is a sandy and mountainous desert situated in Balochistan province in south-western Pakistan.

This desert was the site of Pakistan's second nuclear test, Chagai-II, which was carried out on 30 May 1998.

The land is not fit for agriculture due to low irrigation. The occupation is mainly agriculture and farming. The terrain is mainly dry, gray-brown sand that stretches out.

Alexander the Great travelled through this region. He had entered the Indus Valley from the historic Khyber Pass and after defeating king Porus, in the fourth century BC, he made his way back to Babylonia and passed through the Kharan desert (It was known as Gedrosia at that time), in an attempt to compare himself against Cyrus the Great who had once passed through the desert.

Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine nuclear weapons' effectiveness, yield, and explosive capability. Testing nuclear weapons offers practical information about how the weapons function, how detonations are affected by different conditions, and how personnel, structures, and equipment are affected when subjected to nuclear explosions. However, nuclear testing has often been used as an indicator of scientific and military strength. Many tests have been overtly political in their intention; most nuclear weapons states publicly declared their nuclear status through a nuclear test.

The first nuclear device was detonated as a test by the United States at the Trinity site in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, with a yield approximately equivalent to 20 kilotons of TNT. The first thermonuclear weapon technology test of an engineered device, codenamed "Ivy Mike", was tested at the Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands on November 1, 1952 (local date), also by the United States. The largest nuclear weapon ever tested was the "Tsar Bomba" of the Soviet Union at Novaya Zemlya on October 30, 1961, with the largest yield ever seen, an estimated 50–58 megatons.

In 1963, three (UK, US, Soviet Union) of the then four nuclear states and many non-nuclear states signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, pledging to refrain from testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, underwater, or in outer space. The treaty permitted underground nuclear testing. France continued atmospheric testing until 1974, and China continued until 1980. Neither has signed the treaty.Underground tests in the Soviet Union continued until 1990, the United Kingdom until 1991, the United States until 1992 (its last nuclear test), and both China and France until 1996. In signing the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in 1996, these countries have pledged to discontinue all nuclear testing; the treaty has not yet entered into force because of failure to be ratified by eight countries. Non-signatories India and Pakistan last tested nuclear weapons in 1998. North Korea conducted nuclear tests in 2006, 2009, 2013, 2016, and 2017. The most recent confirmed nuclear test occurred in September 2017 in North Korea.