Lop Nur
Lop Nur or Lop Nor is a now largely dried-up salt lake formerly located within the Lop Depression in the eastern fringe of the Tarim Basin in the southeastern portion of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, northwestern China, between the Taklamakan and Kumtag deserts. Administratively, the lake is in Lop Nur town, also known as Luozhong of Ruoqiang County, which in its turn is part of the Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture.
The lake system, into which the Tarim River and Shule River drain from the west and east respectively, is the last remnant of the historical post-glacial Tarim Lake, which once covered more than in the Tarim Basin but had progressively shrunk throughout the Holocene due to rain shadowing by the Tibetan Plateau. Lop Nur is hydrologically endorheic; it is landbound, has no outlet, and has relied largely on meltwater runoffs from the Tianshan, Kunlun and the western Qilian Mountains. The lake measured in 1928, but has dried up due to construction of reservoirs which dammed the flow of water feeding into the lake, and only small seasonal lakes and salt marshes may form. The dried-up Lop Nur Basin is covered with a salt crust ranging from in thickness.
An area to the northwest of Lop Nur has been used as the principal nuclear testing site of the People's Republic of China. Since the discovery of potash at the site in the mid-1990s, it is also the location of a large-scale mining operation. There are some restricted areas under military management and cultural relic protection points in the region, which are not open to the public.
History
From around 1800 BC until the 9th century the lake supported a thriving Tocharian culture. Archaeologists have discovered the buried remains of settlements, as well as several of the Tarim mummies, along its ancient shoreline. Former water resources of the Tarim River and Lop Nur nurtured the kingdom of Loulan since the second century BC, an ancient civilisation along the Silk Road, which skirted the lake-filled basin. Loulan became a client state of the Chinese empire in 55 BC, renamed Shanshan. Faxian went by the Lop Desert on his way to the Indus valley, followed by later Chinese pilgrims. Marco Polo in his travels passed through the Lop Desert. In the 19th century and early 20th century, the explorers Ferdinand von Richthofen, Nikolai Przhevalsky, Sven Hedin and Aurel Stein visited and studied the area. It is also likely that Swedish soldier Johan Gustaf Renat had visited the area when he was helping the Zunghars to produce maps over the area in the eighteenth century.The lake was given various names in ancient Chinese texts. In Shiji it was called Yan Ze, indicating its saline nature, near which was located the ancient Loulan Kingdom. In Hanshu it was called Puchang Hai and was given a dimension of 300 to 400 li in length and breadth, indicating it was once a lake of great size. These early texts also mentioned the belief, mistaken as it turns out, that the lake joins the Yellow River at Jishi through an underground channel as the source of the river.
The lake was referred to as the "Wandering Lake" in the early 20th century due to the Tarim River changing its course, causing its terminal lake to alter its location between the Lop Nur dried basin, the Kara-Koshun dried basin and the Taitema Lake basin. This shift of the terminal lake caused some confusion amongst the early explorers as to the exact location of Lop Nur. Imperial maps from the Qing dynasty showed Lop Nur to be located in similar position to the present Lop Nur dried basin, but the Russian geographer Nikolay Przhevalsky instead found the terminal lake at Kara-Koshun in 1867. Sven Hedin visited the area in 1900–1901 and suggested that the Tarim river periodically changed its course to and from between its southbound and northbound direction, resulting in a shift in the position of the terminal lake. The change in the course of the river, which resulted in Lop Nur drying up, was also suggested by Hedin as the reason why ancient settlements such as Loulan had perished.
In 1921, due to human intervention, the terminal lake shifted its position back to Lop Nur. The lake measured 2400 km2 in area in 1930–1931. In 1934, Sven Hedin went down the new Kuruk Darya in a canoe. He found the delta to be a maze of channels and the new lake so shallow that it was difficult to navigate even in a canoe. He had previously walked the dry Kuruk Darya in a caravan in 1900.
In 1952 the terminal lake then shifted to Taitema Lake when the Tarim River and Konque River were separated through human intervention, and Lop Nur dried out again by 1964. In 1972, the Daxihaizi Reservoir was built at Tikanlik, water supply to the lake was cut off, and all the lakes for the most part then dried out, with only small seasonal lakes forming in local depressions in Taitema. The loss of water to the lower Tarim River Valley also led to the deterioration and loss of poplar forests and tamarix shrubs that used to be extensively distributed along the lower Tarim River Valley forming the so-called "Green Corridor". In 2000, in an effort to prevent further deterioration of the ecosystem, water was diverted from Lake Bosten in an attempt to fill the Taitema Lake. The Taitema Lake however had shifted westwards during the past 40 years due in part to the spread of the desert. Another cause of the destabilization of the desert has been the cutting of poplars and willows for firewood; in response, a restoration project to reclaim the poplar forests was initiated.
The Kara-Koshun dried basin may be considered part of the greater Lop Nur.
On 17 June 1980, Chinese scientist Peng Jiamu disappeared while walking into Lop Nur in search of water. His body was never found, and his disappearance remains a mystery. On 3 June 1996, the Chinese explorer Yu Chunshun died while trying to walk across Lop Nur.
Nuclear weapons test base
Lop Nur, situated in the arid Xinjiang region of China's far west, serves as an extensive military base. This location was selected for nuclear testing due to its desolate and isolated nature, devoid of any permanent inhabitants, though the broader Xinjiang region is home to the Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group that has historically faced persecution in China. The Uyghurs have persistently voiced concerns regarding the health risks posed by the towering mushroom clouds and the release of radioactive fallout.Initially, Chinese leadership sought to construct the country's nuclear test site in the Dunhuang area of Gansu. Concerns about weather resulted in a switch to Lop Nur. China established the on 16 October 1959 with Soviet assistance in selection of the site, with its headquarters at Malan Air Base, about northwest of Qinggir. Construction was delayed after the Soviet Union ended its technical assistance to China in 1960.
The first Chinese nuclear bomb test, codenamed "Project 596", occurred at Lop Nur on 16 October 1964. China detonated its first hydrogen bomb on 17 June 1967. Until 1996, 45 nuclear tests were conducted. These nuclear tests were conducted by dropping bombs from aircraft, mounted on towers, launching missiles, detonating weapons underground and in the atmosphere.
On 29 July 1996, China conducted its 45th and final nuclear test at Lop Nor, and issued a formal moratorium on nuclear testing the following day, although further subcritical tests were suspected. In 2009, Jun Takada, a Japanese scientist, published the results of his computer simulation which suggests – based on deaths from Soviet tests – that 194,000 people could have died in China from nuclear-related illnesses. Enver Tohti, an exiled pro-Uyghur independence activist, claimed that cancer rates in the province of Xinjiang were 30 to 35% higher than the national average. In 2012, China announced plans to spend US$1 million to clean up the Malan nuclear base in Lop Nor to create a red tourism site.
In 2020, the U.S. accused China of conducting underground low-yield nuclear tests at Lop Nur in the State Department's Nuclear Compliance Report. China denied the claim, and Jeffrey Lewis pointed to satellite and seismic signatures of such tests being "indistinguishable" from CTBT-compliant subcritical testing. In 2023, satellite open-source intelligence showed evidence of drilling shafts in Lop Nur where nuclear weapons testing could resume.
Further analysis of the satellite images since 2017 also uncovered the development of new infrastructure at the site. This included the construction of new roads, power lines, an electrical substation, and a support area with multiple buildings. What was once a modest site with only a few buildings had transformed into a modern and sophisticated complex, complete with security fences. One of the new structures was a bunker that was fortified with earthen berms and lightning arresters, indicating its suitability for handling high explosives. Tests on miniaturization of missiles and warheads can also be possibly carried out at this site. However, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has dismissed the report and its "utterly irresponsible" claims. China has denied any nuclear testing plans on the site.
In December 2023, a report emerged indicating that China was making preparations to resume nuclear tests in a remote desert. Satellite imagery provided evidence of these preparations, revealing the presence of a drilling rig that had created a deep vertical shaft. This shaft was believed to be designed to contain the destructive power of radiation resulting from large nuclear explosions. Some analysts believe that China has been conducting "supercritical tests that create a self-sustained chain reaction in an underground containment vessel but stop well short of a full yield." In January 2025, analysts detected newly excavated soil in the northern rim of the Lop Nur complex, believed to be from horizontal tunnels used for lower-yield nuclear weapons tests.