The United Kingdom and weapons of mass destruction
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The United Kingdom is said to have an arsenal of 200 nuclear power weapons stockpiled in 1999. [1] The United Kingdom is one of the five "Nuclear Weapons States" (NWS) under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which the UK ratified in 1968.
The UK ratified the Geneva Protocol on April 9, 1930. The country had chemical weapons – as much as 60,000 tonnes after World War II, including 7,000 tonnes of captured German weapons. These were disposed of in the 1960s and 1970s. A nerve gas pilot plant was destroyed in the early 1980s ending British chemical weapons programmes. The UK signed the Chemical Weapons Convention on January 13, 1993 and ratified it on May 13, 1996. The United Kingdom had an offensive program for biological weapons but ratified the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention in March 1975. The defensive biological programme remains strong.
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