Earth Institute News Archive
posted 05/30/00
Test Ban Treaty Opponents Resort to Political Gamesmanship and Dubious Science
Columbia University, NYC
The prospects for U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) were torpedoed in the Senate in October 1999 by a combination of political maneuvering, Clinton Administration inaction, and erroneous but persistent concerns about our verification capabilities, Columbia University seismologist Lynn Sykes contends.
"I realize that these strong words may ruffle some feathers in Washington," Sykes said. "But the time for strong words has come. The stakes are just too high to allow this treaty to be derailed by political stealth and scientific misinformation."
Lynn Sykes
He presented his views Wednesday in Washington at the spring meeting of the American Geophysical Union, where he participated in one of several special sessions on science and policy entitled The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty -- Issues of Verification and Monitoring. His talk, Dealing with Evasive Nuclear Testing under the CTBT, focused on one element of his larger assessment of last October's events, which was published in the May/June issue of the Federation of American Scientists Public Interest Report.
During the Senate debate last fall, opponents of the CTBT -- notably Majority Leader Trent Lott (Republican, Mississippi) and Jesse Helms (Republican, North Carolina) -- cited concerns about our ability to verify treaty compliance with seismic monitoring, focusing in particular on the potential for clandestine nuclear testing within underground cavities.
Referred to as "decoupling," the theory is that detonating a significant blast within a large cavity can dampen the shock and weaken or muffle the resulting seismic waves to below detectable levels, Sykes explained.
According to Dr. Larry Turnbull, chief scientist of the Central Intelligence Agency's Arms Control Intelligence Staff, that is a "credible scenario" for many nuclear powers, including Russia, and China, as well as for countries that may acquire nuclear capability such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Dr. Turnbull has stated that decoupling could reduce the apparent yield of a nuclear test by as much as 70 times, making it plausible that tests of military significance could be hidden from the global CTBT seismic monitoring network.
"These conclusions, which were glibly presented as scientific fact during the abruptly scheduled Senate debate, are flawed at best," Sykes said. "In fact, a great deal of openly available evidence and nonpartisan expert opinion indicate that they are incorrect."
On October 6th, while the matter was still before the Senate, AGU and the Seismological Society of America issued a joint statement skeptical of decoupling, stating that such an effort would "demand extraordinary technical expertise" and was saddled with a high "likelihood of detection." Their conclusion was that "no nation could rely upon successfully concealing a program of nuclear testing, even at low yields," and that "the combined worldwide monitoring resources will meet the verification goals of the CTBT."
"Verification experts in three of our NATO allies -- Great Britain, France and Norway -- have also concluded that concerns about decoupled testing are highly exaggerated," Sykes said.
Actual experience with decoupled nuclear testing is virtually nonexistent, aside from three U.S. and former U.S.S.R. events conducted in salt and soft-rock more than 15 years ago. A very large, nearly spherical cavity is needed, which must be empty of everything but air. Creating, maintaining and hiding such a cavity at depth long enough to conduct a secret test presents an enormous engineering obstacle. Then, after even a small nuclear explosion, ensuring that telltale radiation doesn't reach the surface along cracks and joints in the surrounding rock presents another major hurdle.
"The seamless convergence of all the steps necessary to pull off an evasive decoupled test large enough to be of any military significance is virtually inconceivable, even for Russia and the U.S. with all their experience," Sykes said. "Moreover, the sensitivity of the global CTBT seismic monitoring network is constantly improving, rendering such a scenario evermore unlikely."
Ultimately, given the daunting gauntlet of expensive steps required to conduct even the smallest of clandestine nuclear tests, and the virtual certainty of either seismic, satellite or radiation-leak detection of any misstep, Sykes believes that concerns about verifiability are unfounded.
"Whatever their motivations, those legislators and government officials working to sink the CTBT undermine U.S. national security, and do a disservice to our citizens and to humanity as a whole," Sykes said. "My goal in speaking out is to debunk the unfounded scientific claims with which they justify their opposition."
"Opposing this treaty on the grounds that it could be subverted systematically with decoupled testing is tantamount to hiding in bed because there just might actually be a monster under it."
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