The May 1998 India and Pakistan Nuclear Tests

The Trump administration is considering renewing nuclear weapons testing (1), a move that could increase the risk of another nuclear arms race as well as an inadvertent or intentional nuclear war. Following in the long tradition of scientists opposing nuclear weapons due to their harmful effects on both humanity and the planet (2), we ask the U.S. government to desist from plans to conduct nuclear tests. During the Cold War, the United States conducted 1030 nuclear weapons tests, more than all other nuclear-armed nations combined (3). In 1996, the United States signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), agreeing not to conduct a nuclear weapons test of any yield (4). The United States has not yet ratified the CTBT but did spearhead the 2016 adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2310, which calls upon all countries to uphold the object and purpose of the CTBT by not conducting nuclear tests (5). Eight of the nine nuclear-armed states, including the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, have observed a moratorium on nuclear testing since 1998 (3, 4). The ninth, North Korea, responding to international pressure, stopped testing warhead detonations (as opposed to missile flights) in 2017 (6). If the United States ratified the CTBT, joining the 168 countries who have already done so (4), there is a good chance that the other holdout countries would ratify the treaty as well (7).

On September 24, 1996, President Clinton signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) at the United Nations (UN), calling it “the longest-sought, hardest-fought prize in the history of arms control.” This treaty bans all nuclear weapon test explosions and any other nuclear explosions anywhere in the world, of any size, and at any time in the future–a complete “zero-yield” ban on nuclear testing. Indeed, it is a crowning accomplishment of over forty years of bipartisan arms control efforts in the United States, beginning in the 50s with the Eisenhower administration. Over 145 countries have now signed the CTBT, a global endorsement of political support with a pledge to abide by the terms of the Treaty until it becomes international law. Before this happens, 44 countries with nuclear capabilities, either in reactor technologies, research, or weaponry, must ratify the Treaty and submit instruments of ratification to the UN Secretary General. Three...

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On-site inspection (OSI) is one of the four verification provisions of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Under the provisions of the CTBT, once the Treaty has entered into force, any signatory party can request an on-site inspection, which can then be carried out after approval (by majority voting) of the Executive Council. Once an OSI is approved, a team of 40 inspectors will be assembled to carry out an inspection to ''clarify whether a nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion has been carried out in violation of Article I''. One challenging aspect of carrying out an on-site inspection (OSI) in the case of a purported underground nuclear explosion is to detect and locate the underground effects of an explosion, which may include an explosion cavity, a zone of damaged rock, and/or a rubble zone associated with an underground collapsed cavity. The CTBT (Protocol, Section II part D, paragraph 69) prescribes several types of geophysical investigations that can be carried out for this purpose. One of the methods allowed by the CTBT for geophysical investigation is referred to in the Treaty Protocol as ''resonance seismometry''. This method, which was proposed and strongly promoted by Russia during the Treaty negotiations, is not described in the Treaty. Some clarification about the nature of the resonance method can be gained from OSI workshop presentations by Russian experts in the late 1990s. Our understanding is that resonance seismometry is a passive method that relies on seismic reverberations set up in an underground cavity by the passage of waves from regional and teleseismic sources. Only a few examples of the use of this method for detection of underground cavities have been presented, and those were done in cases where the existence and precise location of an underground cavity was known. As is the case with many of the geophysical methods allowed during an OSI under the Treaty, how resonance seismology really works and its effectiveness for OSI purposes has yet to be determined. For this experiment, we took a broad approach to the definition of ''resonance seismometry''; stretching it to include any means that employs passive seismic methods to infer the character of underground materials. In recent years there have been a number of advances in the use of correlation and noise analysis methods in seismology to obtain information about the subsurface. Our objective in this experiment was to use noise analysis and correlation analysis to evaluate these techniques for detecting and characterizing the underground damage zone from a nuclear explosion. The site that was chosen for the experiment was the Mackerel test in Area 4 of the former Nevada Test Site (now named the Nevada National Security Site, or NNSS). Mackerel was an underground nuclear test of less than 20 kT conducted in February of 1964 (DOENV-209-REV 15). The reason we chose this site is because there was a known apical cavity occurring at about 50 m depth above a rubble zone, and that the site had been investigated by the US Geological Survey with active seismic methods in 1965 (Watkins et al., 1967). Note that the time delay between detonation of the explosion (1964) and the time of the present survey (2010) is nearly 46 years - this would not be typical of an expected OSI under the CTBT.

As many nations push for an indefinite extension of the Non‐Proliferation Treaty, international pressure for a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) is simultaneously increasing. Advocates of a CTBT argue that a complete ban on nuclear testing by all nations will prevent the development of more advanced nuclear weapons, de‐emphasize the importance of nuclear weapons for national security, and reduce the discriminatory nature of the Non‐Proliferation Treaty regime. While it is generally recognized that nuclear testing is not a technical requirement for developing at least a simple fissile weapon, many argue that a CTBT will provide an unambiguous context in which other, more direct, restrictions can be implemented. In negotiating a CTBT, however, provisions must be made to ensure that the benefits of the treaty are not outweighed by undiscovered violations, should they occur. Because the development of such provisions requires value judgments as to the benefits of the treaty and the costs of undetected violations, verification has always been a sensitive issue for a CTBT [van der Vink and Paine, 1992]

Two decades after the U.S. Senate declined in 1999 to give its consent to ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the treaty remains in legal and political limbo. Legally, the treaty cannot enter into force without U.S. ratification. However, the Senate’s rejection does not strip the treaty of its force as an element of customary international law or alter the will of other signatories to see it enter into force. Politically, the debate over the virtues and flaws of the treaty remains as strong as ever, with some CTBT advocates pushing energetically for U.S. re-review while some opponents seek ways to “un-sign” the treaty. Meanwhile, despite the Senate’s rejection of the treaty, the United States acts in a manner consistent with its main obligations by maintaining a moratorium on explosive nuclear testing and providing financial support (as well as technical expertise) to the CTBT Organization (CTBTO)—in particular the CTBTO’s International Monitoring System (IMS). The CTBT may well remain in such limbo for a long time to come, unless some catalytic event comes along to re-shape national perceptions and priorities, one way or the other. The treaty’s future, whatever it might be, will be determined in part by how much perspectives might have changed in light of interim developments. Our purpose is to shed light on some of those developments and to assess their relevance. The 1999 ratification debate addressed a large number of issues. Rejection was driven by various policy and technical judgments. The purpose of this paper is to re-examine those technical judgments in light of what has been learned over the following two decades. On some technical matters, there was explicit recognition of extant uncertainties, as well as a conviction and hope that time would dispel them. To be doubly clear, our purpose is not to recommend a way forward on CTBT ratification. The policy judgments of 1999 and 2020 are beyond the scope of this paper. This technical re-examination proceeds as follows. It begins with a short background section to introduce the key technical matters in discussion in the U.S. ratification process. Then it moves systematically through each of those topics with a review of relevant background information, a discussion of key points in debate, an analysis of subsequent experience, and a current assessment. The historical analysis draws on many sources including the primary documents of the Congressional debate, the official article-by-article interpretation by the Department of State, and the statements of key players in the process. We also relied on key technical reports and publications by subject matter experts that have addressed in more detail many of the issues in our focus. These sources include the 2002 and 2012 reports of the National Academy of Sciences as well as publications by senior technical staff of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) who were actively involved in the ratification debate, including then-Laboratory Director Bruce Tarter. We also conducted several interviews with government officials from the 1990s, past laboratory directors, and other members of the scientific community. But, except where individuals are specifically cited by name, the judgments offered here are our own and should not be attributed to any other individual or to LLNL as such.

A global radionuclide monitoring system is being engineered as part of a multi-technology verification system for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The system detects airborne radioactive aerosols and gases that can indicate nuclear weapons test debris. The backbone of the system is a network of 80 remote detection stations that utilize high-volume air sampling and high-resolution gamma spectrometry to provide in-situ assay and near-real time reporting. These stations are linked to the International Data Centre, which is a central data processing hub where raw spectral data is automatically processed, analyzed, and disseminated to the states parties. Measurements are categorized based on spectral content to determine which contain anomalous anthropogenic radionuclides that require intensive radiochemical analysis at a certified laboratory. The resulting system has the capability to measure microbecquerel concentrations of radionuclides and provide accessible data products within minutes of field measurements. During the past year of international operations, the minimum detectable concentrations and spectroscopy processing statistics were recorded as a function of geographical location and time. The results show that this system is an effective tool for nuclear test monitoring, as well as other applications such as radiological emergency response, public health monitoring, and scientific research.

As deputy assistant secretary for research, development, and simulation in the US Department of Energy Office of Defense Programs, Gil Weigand provides programmatic and policy direction for the DoE's nuclear weapons research, development, and simulation work. In partnership with the national labs, he leads the effort to preserve the technology base and develop programs for the surety, reliability, military effectiveness, and credibility of the nation's nuclear-weapons stockpile.Prior to this job, Weigand was deputy assistant secretary for strategic computing and simulation and a senior information officer for the DoE Office of Defense Programs, where he led advanced initiatives in high-performance computer simulation, computation, and communications. In particular, he was responsible for directing the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative, which has created leading-edge computational modeling and simulation tools necessary to move from test-based to simulation-based assessment and certification. The ASCI initiative is based on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, an international treaty to move toward no nuclear testing announced by President Bill Clinton on 11 August 1995.Paul Messina now manages ASCI as DoE deputy assistant secretary for advanced simulation and computing for defense programs. He is on a two-year leave from the California Institute of Technology, where he is assistant vice president for scientific computing, a faculty associate in scientific computing, and director of the Center for Advanced Computing Research. He has a joint appointment at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as manager of high-performance computing. Messina is also on leave from the position of chief architect for the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure, where he established and led the Scalable I/O Initiative.Editor-in-chief George Cybenko recently talked to Weigand and Messina about their roles in ASCI and the Alliance Program, and their thoughts about where the high end of computational performance is headed.

This chapter discusses the nature of activity compatible with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) that is to be expected in the nuclear weapon states in maintaining a safe and reliable stockpile of nuclear weapons, and speculates on the types of advances in nuclear weaponry that might possibly be achieved while respecting fully the text of the CTBT. It discusses the means the nuclear weapon states may use to retain their nuclear weapon expertise both for activities to be conducted under a CTBT and as a precaution against the possibility of collapse of a CTBT regime. The chapter discusses the degree to which a CTBT would limit the nature of nuclear weaponry that might be achieved by a non-nuclear weapon state - either a State outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) but still Party to a CTBT, or one in violation of its NPT obligations.

24 Seismological methods of monitoring compliance with the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty

North Korea detonated its first known nuclear device, a moderate-sized event in the northeastern corner of the Korean Peninsula, on 9 October 2006. A second one, several times more powerful, was set off nearby on 25 May 2009. Both were recorded at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by a modern broadband (0.03-30 Hz) network of seismographs deployed since 2004 along the Sino-Korean border, and by station MDJ due north of ground zero. Spanning a wide range of station azimuth (259°-11°), the near-regional (1.3°-3.3°) paths are all purely continental and away from continental margins, making the resulting data uniquely suited for assessing the capabilities of an out-country network to verify the compliance by North Korea with a future comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. The mbLg magnitudes for the 2006 and 2009 nuclear explosions were determined anew, giving 4:32 0:13 and 4:86 0:13, respectively. We show that the MS-mbLgmethod correctly differenti- ates these nuclear explosions from natural earthquakes, although the differentiation was not achieved in studies based on published mbLg values. An analysis of the Pg∶Lg ratio, derived from recordings of the two nuclear tests and of four regional earthquakes selected for their comparable magnitudes (4:2 ≤ mb ≤ 4:8), reveals that the ratios associated with the explosion and earthquake populations showed surpris- ingly little overlap for a broad frequency range of 3 to 11 Hz. In principle, MS-mb can also be used to correctly identify the nuclear tests as explosions, but the mb measure- ment for such moderate-sized events is not as robust as the mbLg measurement, rendering this traditionally favored method less practical.

The subject of the study of this article is some aspects of the problem of nuclear disarmament, which are highlighted, among other things, from the perspective of the ongoing military special operation in Ukraine. The history of the creation of the nuclear disarmament regime is traced. The main documents regulating the procedure of nuclear disarmament are characterized. The ways of strengthening and finding a compromise in the issues of nuclear disarmament in the world have been identified. The analysis of the problem of nuclear disarmament, which is at the center of international relations and is relevant in the theory of international law, is given. The author has studied the international legal regulation of nuclear disarmament, identified its problematic aspects. The main documents in the field of legal regulation of nuclear disarmament are the Treaties on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, as well as the International Monitoring System created for its implementation. The existing international legal system of control over nuclear disarmament, non-nuclear testing, and the use of atomic energy exclusively for peaceful purposes does not always prove its effectiveness, as a result of which countries with unstable political situation possess nuclear weapons, which entails an additional threat to the world community. As a result of the analysis, it was concluded that the current system of international monitoring of nuclear tests and the system of international regulation of nuclear disarmament need to be modernized in order to eliminate the threat of proliferation and use of nuclear weapons. Currently, the development of technologies for the enrichment of radioactive substances, the emergence of new threats and other factors create significant obstacles to the preservation of the nuclear disarmament regime.

The rejection of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) by the U.S. Senate in October 1999 could have been avoided, and the consequences of that vote still loom in the minds of supporters of the treaty. President Barack Obama has embraced the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, and a key element of the Obama administration's arms control agenda is delivering on U.S. CTBT ratification. In order to secure the two-thirds majority in the Senate necessary to ratify the treaty, senators that remain skeptical of nuclear disarmament must also be convinced that the entry into force of the CTBT is in the national security interest of the United States. This article provides an analysis of the issues surrounding U.S. CTBT ratification divided into three segments—verifiability of the treaty, reliability of the U.S. stockpile, and the treaty's impact on U.S. national security—and concludes that CTBT ratification serves the security objectives of the United States. The CTBT constitutes an integral component of the multilateral nonproliferation architecture designed to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and it constrains the qualitative development of nuclear weapons, thereby hindering efforts by states of concern to develop advanced nuclear weapons.

Who could have imagined the possibility of an inter-Korean Summit this year, let alone one between the United States and North Korea? Recent news that North Korea may suspend nuclear tests and dismantle its test site is a startling about-face, given the country's multitude of missile and nuclear weapons tests over the past decade. Those incidents increased tensions at a time when questions were being raised about the instruments, approaches, and mechanisms that nations collectively strive to use to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction. At the end of this month, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) will convene a symposium in Vienna to emphasize what brings real security to the world—negotiated agreements that are effectively verifiable and credibly enforceable. These include the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). The issue is not whether such current institutions and instruments are failing, but rather, preserving their integrity and building further trust in and around them.

This article surveys China's policy towards nuclear non-proliferation regime and contests view that China has now completed transition from a challenger to an upholder of global non-proliferation regime. It argues that the learning curve hypothesis and bureaucratic politics and profit motives arguments provide only a partial explanation of China's shifting but ambiguous and contradictory policy towards non-proliferation. China has cleverly played the proliferation card by exploiting loopholes in nonproliferation regime and contradictions in major power relationships so as to serve its national security interests. The article examines factors that have led Beijing to disregard non-proliferation regime in past and might make it continue to do so in future. It also analyses changing Asian security environment and its impact on China's nonproliferation commitments in future. Introduction The global nuclear non-proliferation (NNP) regime is an outgrowth of steps taken during second half of twentieth century to halt horizontal spread of nuclear weapons. The NNP regime consists of several components. These are Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), founded in 1957; 1953 Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) banning testing of nuclear weapons in atmosphere, outer space, or under water; 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which was extended indefinitely in 1995; London-based Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG), formed in 1974, which requires IAEA safeguards on all of its participants' nuclear exports; 1987 Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) aimed at halting proliferation of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles and other unmanned delivery systems; 1996 Wassenaar Arrangement (a successor to Cold War era's COCOM) covering conventional weapons and dual-use exports; and Zangger Committee which covers nuclear-related exports. T he 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which has yet to come into force, further constrains all states from conducting nuclear tests. In addition, nuclear weapons free zones (NWFZs) in Latin America, South Pacific, and Africa have further strengthened regime. In 1995, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) proposed establishment of a NWFZ in Southeast Asia, and in 1997 five Central Asian states issued Tashkent statement proposing a NWFZ for Central Asia. The overall record of NNP regime has been a mixture of success and failure. On positive side, five decades of international efforts at curbing spread of nuclear weapons have created a political and normative climate in which no state can easily declare its nuclear intentions. The unsuitability of nuclear weapons to most military situations also renders them useless. Moreover, a number of nuclearcapable states -- notably Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, and former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan -- have in recent years agreed to abandon strive for, or dismantle their nuclear weapons capabilities. In this sense, regime has been fairly successful. On negative side, campaign for nuclear disarmament appears to be failing just when success seemed at hand. Since mid1980s, regime has been undermined by emergence of new suppliers of nuclear technology and delivery systems, as well as by an increase in number of threshold or new nuclear weapons states (NWSs).. Apart from five declared NWSs (the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China), and two new self-declared NWSs (India and Pakistan), several other nations (Israel, Japan, North Korea, and Iran) are widely believed to have made significant progress towards acquiring nuclear weapons capabilities. The changes in international system and global nuclear balance of power since end of Cold War have thrown up new challenges and opportunities for NNP regime. …