Fri Mar 21 10:24:20 UTC 2025: ## Viral Video Misidentified as Indian Nuclear Test: Fact-Check Reveals US Origin
**NEW DELHI** – A video circulating on social media, purportedly showing a nuclear test in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, India, has been debunked as a misrepresentation. Fact-checking by NDTV, in collaboration with the Shakti Collective and Factly, reveals the footage actually depicts a US Department of Energy underground nuclear test conducted years ago.
The video, which shows a large crater forming after an explosion in an empty plot, sparked claims that it documented Pokhran 3, a supposed clandestine Indian nuclear test. However, a reverse image search traced the video back to a 2007 YouTube upload explicitly credited to the US Department of Energy. The description details the footage as a historic US underground nuclear test, part of a series used for waste disposal at a specific site. A second YouTube video from 2010, also crediting the US Department of Energy, further corroborated this information.
Several official US government documents and reports, containing similar imagery of underground nuclear tests, support the video’s origin. Conversely, no credible evidence supports the claim of a nuclear test in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh. Official Indian government statements, such as a Press Information Bureau (PIB) release, confirm India’s nuclear tests were solely conducted at Pokhran, Rajasthan, in 1974 and 1998.
Therefore, the claim that the viral video depicts a nuclear test in Bareilly, India, is definitively FALSE. The video is of a US underground nuclear test, erroneously linked to India and shared widely on social media.
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