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.)
There's also the sailors they put on ships they'd nuked, and swore to secrecy under penalty of prison for like 40 years, until most of them were dead, soldiers they walked into the immediate fallout of nuclear bombs, prisoners injected with nuclear material, just comically evil shit all around.
And the random Japanese fishermen who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and who were covered in radioactive fallout. And then they moved the Bikini islanders to a deserted island unable to support human life. They also injected plutonium into some poor unsuspecting patients to see what would happen.