China rebrands Cold War nuke bunker as tourist draw

It was a top-secret Chinese nuclear facility with a deadly Cold War mission – to make plutonium for an atomic bomb – but these days its doors are wide open as a tourist attraction.

The cavernous “816 Nuclear Military Engineering” installation was burrowed into lush green mountains in Southwest China over a 17-year span by 60,000 soldiers toiling day and night in dangerous conditions.

Construction on the vast site began in 1967, three years after China successfully tested its first atomic weapon, as China hurried to catch its nuclear program up with that of Cold War rivals the US and the Soviet Union.

Located in the huge Chinese municipality of Chongqing, it covers 100,000 square meters – the equivalent of 14 soccer fields – and with a volume equal to 600 Olympic-sized pools.

It has the world’s largest known network of man-made tunnels, its maze-like corridors extending more than 20 kilometers.

Surrounded by darkness and damp concrete, visitors are transported back to the Cold War.

“It’s very impressive and mysterious,” said Pan Ya, a 30-something tourist from a neighboring town who visited with her parents.

“They had heard about this place for a long time but were never able to come in,” she said while gazing at the old reactor core, now decorated with fake plutonium bars colored a luminous green.

The facility cost 80 billion yuan ($12 billion) but, ironically, no nuclear material ever passed through it due to a dramatic shift in developments above ground even as soldiers labored below.

China established diplomatic ties with the US in 1979 and, later, tension with the Soviet Union also eased. Although near completion, the site was judged to have no further use and was abandoned in 1984.

Declassified in 2002, it was opened to Chinese tourists in 2010 and began welcoming foreign visitors toward the end of 2016.

More than 300,000 Chinese tourists have since visited, while less than 100 foreigners had done so as of last month.

“We’re not promoting nuclear weapons,” explains Zheng Zhihong, 816’s manager.

“Quite the opposite, I hope that one day the nuclear powers will say ‘Stop, let’s all count to three and then destroy our arsenals.’”