Monitoring Nuclear Testing is Getting Easier
The ability to detect a clandestine nuclear explosion in order to verify a ban on nuclear testing and to detect violations has improved dramatically in the past two decades.
There have been “technological and scientific revolutions in the fields of seismology, acoustics, and radionuclide sciences as they relate to nuclear explosion monitoring,” according to a new report published by Los Alamos National Laboratory that describes those developments.
“This document… reviews the accessible literature for four research areas: source physics (understanding signal generation), signal propagation (accounting for changes through physical media), sensors (recording the signals), and signal analysis (processing the signal).”
A “signal” here is a detectable, intelligible change in the seismic, acoustic, radiological or other environment that is attributable to a nuclear explosion.
The new Los Alamos report “is intended to help sustain the international conversation regarding the [Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty] and nuclear explosive testing moratoria while simultaneously acknowledging and celebrating research to date.”
“The primary audience for this document is the next generation of research scientists that will further improve nuclear explosion monitoring, and others interested in understanding the technical literature related to the nuclear explosion monitoring mission.”
See Trends in Nuclear Explosion Monitoring Research & Development — A Physics Perspective, Los Alamos National Laboratory, LA-UR-17-21274, June 2017.
“A ban on all nuclear tests is the oldest item on the nuclear arms control agenda,” the Congressional Research Service noted last year. “Three treaties that entered into force between 1963 and 1990 limit, but do not ban, such tests. In 1996, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which would ban all nuclear explosions. In 1997, President Clinton sent the CTBT to the Senate, which rejected it in October 1999.”
Dr. Lim will help develop, organize, and implement FAS’s growing contribution in the area of catastrophic risk including on core areas of nuclear weapons, AI and national security, space, and other emerging technologies.
Moreover, the recent decrease in UK government transparency regarding the status of its nuclear arsenal and modernization program reflects a worrisome global trend.
Even without weapons present, the addition of a large nuclear air base in northern Europe is a significant new development that would have been inconceivable just a decade-and-a-half ago.
Empowering U.S. allies to do more so Washington can do and spend less sounds attractive. But enabling, or looking the other way at the spread of nuclear weapons is not in America’s interests anymore today than it was in the 20th century.