Nuclear weapons debate
After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world’s nuclear weapons stockpiles grew, and nuclear weapons have been detonated on over two thousand occasions for testing and demonstration purposes. Countries known to have detonated nuclear weapons—and that acknowledge possessing such weapons—are (chronologically): the United States, the Soviet Union (succeeded as a nuclear power by Russia), the United Kingdom, France, the People's Republic of China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea.
Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
South Africa is the only country that developed nuclear weapons by itself and later dismantled them – unlike the former Soviet states Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, which inherited nuclear weapons from the former USSR and also acceded to the NPT as non-nuclear weapon states.