Talk:Canopus (nuclear test)

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[edit] China response

"The announcement by France in the late 1960s to test a hydrogen bomb provoked the People's Republic of China to conduct a full scale hydrogen bomb test of its own on June 17, 1967."

I'm pretty sure that in China Builds the Bomb they make it clear that the PRC had planned to developed staged thermonuclear weapons very early on (and had been working on them before their first fission weapon test). I also seem to recall that France was feeling very left out as the only nation for awhile without an H-bomb, so it seems odd to say that the Chinese only decided to detonate after hearing from the French... just some thoughts I had. --Fastfission 01:24, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Pretending that China built its bomb "because of the French" is preposterous. We need a serious quote or reference, otherwise the sentence will have to be deleted. Hugo Dufort 00:07, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

There is a film produced by the Chinese August One Film studio called Huge Explosions in the East. In it they specifically mention that a major motivation for the June 17, 1967 H-bomb test was France's announcment of the Canopus test, which would be conducted the following year in 1968. This may simply be Communist propoganda, considering the producer of the film, however, this is not a 'made up' fact. I added the citation for this. I would not find it surprising if the development of an experimental hydrogen bomb would have been accelerated with the news of the Canopus test. Tzar 02:52, 20 October 2006 (UTC)