On September 24, 1996, President Clinton signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty at the United Nations Headquarters. Over the next five months, 141 nations, including the four other nuclear weapon statesâ€"Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdomâ€"added their signatures to this total ban on nuclear explosions. To help achieve verification of compliance with its provisions, the treaty specifies an extensive International Monitoring System of seismic, hydroacoustic, infrasonic, and radionuclide sensors. This volume identifies specific research activities that will be needed if the United States is to effectively monitor compliance with the treaty provisions.

How can countries verify compliance with the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and detect and deter violations? It is in their interest to increase their verification readiness because the assessment of compliance with the treaty rests with states parties to the CTBT. The treaty provides countries with two verification elements: an international system of monitoring stations, and an on-site inspection regime. The monitoring system can detect nuclear explosions underground, in the atmosphere and under water. This book provides incentives to nations around the world on how they can organize their efforts to verify compliance with the CTBT and how they can collaborate with other countries, perhaps on a regional basis, to monitor areas of concern. Such focused efforts can improve their detection and deterrence capabilities through precision monitoring. The book addresses the CTBT verification from the perspective of countries. It shows how they can create the essential tools for the assessment of the large amounts of data available from the verification regime and other sources, including observations from satellites and thousands of stations outside of the treaty regime. Countries can also use current scientific and technological developments to assist them in verifying compliance with the treaty. The book offers political and scientific analysis on the evolution of the treaty over the years. The book is intended for professionals in the political, diplomatic, scientific and military fields who deal with international security, non-proliferation and arms control. It is also intended for non-governmental organizations and journalists seeking a better understanding of the nuclear test ban issue and how states can verify compliance with the treaty.

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) is dedicated to banning nuclear explosions worldwide. It was negotiated and adopted by the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva to comprehensively prohibit nuclear testing underground, underwater, and in the atmosphere. It was opened for signature in 1996 and will enter into force as soon as all 44 nuclear technology holder countries, as denoted in Annex 2 to the Treaty, will have signed and ratified it. Germany signed the CTBT in 1996 and ratified it in 1998, thereby committing to establish a National Data Center (NDC) and to install, operate, and maintain five stations of the International Monitoring System (IMS) for monitoring the compliances with the Treaty. Contributions on various CTBT related topics by authors from the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources in Hannover (Bundesanstalt f�r Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe, BGR), which has been mandated by Germany as the NDC, are presented in this book. Studies on institutional, technical and scientific aspects in the CTBT context are described to highlight recent, current and future work at the German NDC and to contribute to the CTBT monitoring and verification tasks. Nevertheless, this book focuses primarily on those aspects of the verification regime where BGR has expertise as well as BGR's activities and responsibilities as the German NDC and an IMS station operator during the last twenty years. An overview of the CTBT history, verification, and implementation in Germany is provided together with a description of the five German IMS stations and the seismology, infrasound, hydroacoustic and radionuclide technologies. Studies on the global performance of the IMS technologies to detect, locate, and identify nuclear and non-nuclear events are presented, as well as various case studies on the application, testing and benchmarking of these technologies. These case studies include, in particular, the North Korean nuclear weapon tests from 2006 to 2016, but also the National Data Center preparedness exercises from 2007 to 2013, the Tohoku earthquake with tsunami and Fukushima reactor accident in 2011, and the Chelyabinsk meteoroid explosion in 2013. Further studies are related to considerations on the quality of CTBT International Data Center waveform products, and to the usefulness and potential of satellite remote sensing in CTBT context as a National Technical Means (NTM). Finally, the role of On-Site Inspection (OSI) in general and, specifically, Seismic Aftershock Monitoring Systems (SAMS) are discussed for investigating potential treaty violations as the ultimate step in the verification chain.

The contributors to this book describe, discuss, and evaluate the normative reframing brought about by the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (the Ban Treaty), taking you on a journey through its genesis and negotiation history to the shape of the emerging global nuclear order. Adopted by the United Nations on 7 July 2017, the Ban Treaty came into effect on 22 January 2021. For advocates and supporters, weapons that were always immoral are now also illegal. To critics, it represents a profound threat to the stability of the existing global nuclear order with the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty as the normative anchor. As the most significant leap in nuclear disarmament in fifty years and a rare case study of successful state-civil society partnership in multilateral diplomacy, the Ban Treaty challenges the established order. The book’s contributors are leading experts on the Ban Treaty, including senior scholars, policymakers and civil society activists. A vital guide to the Ban Treaty for students of nuclear disarmament, arms control and diplomacy as well as for policymakers in those fields.

Nuclear tests have caused public concern ever since the first such test was conducted, more than six decades ago. During the Cold War, however, con- tions were not conducive to discussing a complete ban on nuclear testing. It was not until 1993 that negotiations on such a treaty finally got under way. From then on, things moved relatively quickly: in 1996, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). To date, the Treaty has been signed by 178 states and ratified by 144, though it has yet to enter into force, as nine out of 44 ‘‘Annex 2 states’’, whose ratification is mandatory, have not heeded the call. Nevertheless, the CTBT verification system is already provisionally operational and has proven its effectiveness. We commend the CTBT organisation in Vienna for its successful efforts to build a verification network. This book is an excellent overview of the evolution of the CTBT and its verification regime. The authors are eminent scholars from the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden who have been intimately involved with the CTBT and its verification agency, the CTBTO Preparatory Commission, from their inc- tion to the present day. They have written a thorough and engaging narrative of the long road that led to the CTBT. Their story will appeal to both the layman and the expert and provide useful lessons for future negotiations on disarmament issues.

In September 1996, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), prohibiting nuclear explosions worldwide, in all environments. The treaty calls for a global verification system, including a network of 321 monitoring stations distributed around the globe, a data communications network, an international data centre (IDC), and on-site inspections, to verify compliance. A global hydroacoustic monitoring system is being planned and implemented for verification of the CTBT. Much of the research conducted over the past several decades on acoustic surveillance of the oceans, formerly driven by the need to detect and track submarines, is now being applied to the development of effective monitoring methods to verify compliance with the CTBT. The aim of this volume on Hydroacoustic Monitoring of the CTBT is to summarize the research being conducted in this field and to provide basic references for future research. Much of the new research emphasizes major advances in understanding the coupling of ocean acoustic waves with elastic waves in the solid Earth. Topics covered include source excitation, detection and classification of events generating hydroacoustic signals, discrimination between underwater explosions and naturally occurring events, as well as topics in coupling of acoustic to seismic wavefields.

This open access book examines key aspects of international cooperation to enhance nuclear safety, security, safeguards, and nonproliferation, thereby assisting in development and maintenance of the verification regime and fostering progress toward a nuclear weapon-free world. Current challenges are discussed and attempts made to identify possible solutions and future improvements, considering scientific developments that have the potential to increase the effectiveness of implementation of international regimes, particularly in critical areas, technology foresight, and the ongoing evaluation of current capabilities.