Underground nuclear explosions: Verifying limits on underground testing, yield estimates, and public policy

Abstract

The period 1982 to 1986 has seen greatly increased activity in a number of problems related to the verification of nuclear test ban treaties. The greater activity results from a combination of scientific advances, major decisions by the United States Government about the negotiation of test ban treaties, the Soviet moratorium on testing, and much greater interest by the U.S. Congress in nuclear testing, test bans and other aspects of arms control. This review seeks to cover a range of activity that extends from scientific research to governmental decisions and public policy. A major aim has also been to provide a detailed bibliography on what is a wide range of topics. It is still not complete for what is a huge so-called "gray literature" of reports to various government agencies. The discussion that follows only covers a selected number of these publications and reports.The last four years have seen major research on the utilization of high-frequency seismic waves, the characterization of seismic sources as being either of the earthquake or explosion type using greater amounts of the information contained in the seismogram, increased use of digital data, the estimation of yields of Soviet weapons tests, debate about whether the Soviet Union has complied with the existing Threshold Test Ban Treaty, the use of regional seismic waves for yield estimation and source characterization, renewed interest in the problem of seismic decoupling for explosions detonated in large cavities, and the emergence of global seismic networks in which data can be transmitted rapidly by satellite in digital form. Political and International ConsiderationsActive interest in a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) is now more than 30 years old. A CTBT, which still does not exist today, is one of the longest running issues in the arms control field. Seismology provides the main tools for the detection of underground atomic testing, for the identification of signals from an event as being from either an underground test or an earthquake, and for accurate estimates of the yields of underground nuclear explosions. The United States and several other countries have conducted extensive programs to improve the detection of nuclear tests for more than 27 years. The United States has spent about a half billion dollars in this endeavor, and more than a billion dollars has been spent worldwide. The verification of atomic testing is one of the prime areas in which geophysicists interact with the formulation of public policy on important issues of national and international concern.The United States, the Soviet Union and more than 120 other countries signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 which forbids atomic testing in either the atmosphere, underwater or space. While it resulted in a great reduction in radioactive pollution of the atmosphere, the Limited Test Ban did not halt the arms race; nuclear testing merely went underground after 1963. Two bilateral treaties signed by the United States and the Soviet Union became effective in 1976. The Th...

Seismic Yield Estimation Using Teleseismic P- and PKP-Waves Recorded at the GRF-(Grafenberg) Array

“…between regions of older and younger geology, as discussed above) reflect in pronounced differences in the attenuation of short-period waves passing through the upper mantle beneath such different areas. Moreover, this qualitative result can be quantified by the statement that the mb bias is very likely to be in the range 0.3-0.4 rnb units between the Central Asia and Nevada test sites (Sykes 1987).…”

“…The conventional technique for estimating the yield of underground nuclear explosions from seismic data uses measurements of the body-wave magnitude mb (Rodean 1971;Bolt 1976;Dahlman & Israelson 1977;Bache 1982). During the past several years, however, major research efforts have been made to improve seismic yield estimation techniques, particularly for Soviet explosions in Central Asia with yields near the 150 kt limit of the Threshold Test Ban Treaty (Sykes 1987). These efforts have concentrated on recalculating more accurate values of mb using station corrections (Marshall et al 1979(Marshall et al , 1984Sykes & Wiggins 1986;Sykes & Ruggi 1987;Smith 1987), accurate determinations of yield using long-period surface waves (Sykes & Cifuentes 1984;Sykes & Wiggins 1986) and the use of the high-frequency surface wave Lg for yield estimation (Nuttli 1986a,b;Alexander et al 1987).…”

Eikonal equation-based earthquake location

“…The detected parameters (magnitude, seismic moment, energy) of the seismic event can also give good estimation on the yielding ratio of the nuclear explosions. The specific procedures and results can be found in Sykes [1987], Kim [2009] and Adushkin [2001].…”