They are in fact referencing project 596, which was a nuclear test conducted in a very remote desert region called "Lop Nur". This region was chosen because it is just over 300km away from the nearest town.
Meanwhile, the American Nevada test site was located only 65km away from the nearest town, and the USA remains the only country to have dropped a nuclear bomb directly on a civilian population, and they did it twice. (not even including the times they dropped nukes on small island populations, promising they'd be able to return.)
Lop Nur is the last remnant of the glacial sea that occupied the Tarim Basin, it used to be a large lake but it was reduced to a small lake partially from over irrigation. a couple of cities near it had to be abandoned as this happened, before the 7th century ce. further modern irrigation made it fully dry up in the 70's