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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Seismic verification of nuclear-testing treaties

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:6955158
To a great extent, the capabilities of any given seismic monitoring networks are determined by how the monitoring network are determined by how the monitoring task is approached and what supplementary provisions are negotiated within the treaty. If agreements can be negotiated to reduce uncertainty, then seismology can be very effective and extremely low yields could be monitored with high confidence. The report addresses two key questions: (1) down to what size explosion can underground testing be seismically monitored with high confidence, and (2) how accurately can the yields of underground explosions be measured seismically. The answers to these questions provide the technical information that lies at the heart of the political debate over: (1) how low a threshold test ban treaty with the Soviet Union the authors could verify, (2) whether the 1976 Threshold Test Ban Treaty is verifiable, and (3) whether the Soviet Union has complied with present testing restrictions.
Research Organization:
Office of Technology Assessment (U.S. Congress), Washington, DC
OSTI ID:
6955158
Report Number(s):
PB-88-214853/XAB; OTA-ISC-361
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English