"I find hope in the work of long-established groups such as the Arms Control Association...[and] I find hope in younger anti-nuclear activists and the movement around the world to formally ban the bomb."
Arms Control Now Blog
Authored by on June 26, 2017
Brenna Gautam is a CTBTO Youth Group Member who will be working with the Project to post brief daily updates about the on-goings at the conference as it relates to the CTBTO Youth Group, civil society, and capacity building. She is a student at Georgetown Law School. Shervin Taheran is the program and policy associate at the Arms Control Association. Day 1: Monday, June 26, 2017 The CTBTO Science and Technology 2017 began with introductory remarks from Executive Secretary of the CTBTO Dr. Lassina Zerbo at the specifically designated morning-long CTBTO Youth Group Orientation Session. The…
Authored by on June 20, 2017
The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization released a press release today stating that the CTBTO has successfully certified its eleventh, and final, hydroacoustic station June 19, 2017 on the Crozet Islands (France). The station was installed in December 2016 after many obstacles as part of the International Monitoring System (IMS) network, which monitors 24/7 for nuclear explosions. The relatively low frequency underwater sound produced by a nuclear test can be detected a great distance from their source, requiring only a few hydroacoustic stations around the world. The certification…
Authored by on June 13, 2017
Earlier this week the Los Alamos National Laboratory released a report, “Trends in Nuclear Explosion Monitoring Research and Development -- A Physics Perspective,” assessing current literature relating to explosion monitoring and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) for the years 1993 to 2016. The LANL report claims that "there have been significant technological and scientific revolutions in the fields of seismology, acoustics, and radionuclide sciences as they relate to nuclear explosion monitoring" and the CTBT, and also highlights how the CTBT was necessary to universalize…
Authored by on May 24, 2017
The Trump administration's State Department budget request for fiscal year 2018 includes full funding for the United States assessed contribution to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), which operates the global monitoring system to detect and deter nuclear explosions and verify compliance with the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT): "Contributions to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization’s Preparatory Commission (PrepCom) ($31.0 million): PrepCom assistance helps to fund the fielding, operation, and maintenance of the state-of-the-art…
Authored by on May 2, 2017
Japan announced its largest, voluntary contribution of $2.43 million (USD) to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) Feb. 23 to improve the organization's verification capabilities to detect nuclear explosions around the world. CTBTO Executive Secretary Dr. Lassina Zerbo praised the act, telling Permanent Representative of Japan, Ambassador Mitsuru Kitano, “This generous contribution will further build-up the International Monitoring System’s capacity to improve our radionuclide monitoring technology, which can conclusively establish whether a nuclear test explosion has…
Authored by on March 15, 2017
Greg Spriggs, a weapon physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and a team made up of film experts, archivists, and software developers have set out to find, preserve, and declassify the 10,000 films made depicting the 210 U.S. atmospheric nuclear tests from between 1945 to 1962. The team has located around 6,500 of the films of which 4,200 have been scanned, 400 to 500 have been reanalyzed and around 750 have been declassified. Because the films have been stored for many years, some of the films are decomposing and need to be digitized as soon as possible. Since the films…
Authored by on March 7, 2017
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) introduced legislation on February 7 to limit all funding for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), except for its International Monitoring System (IMS). Although the legislation partially protects funds towards the IMS, portions of its overall budget that pay for staff time and the International Data Centre, which processes information given by IMS operations, are supported by the CTBTO. Since the United States provided about a quarter of the CTBTO budget of $128 million in 2016, the possibility of underfunding the…
Authored by on December 15, 2016
U.S. Secretary of Energy Dr. Ernest Moniz and Executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization Dr. Lassina Zerbo headlined a November 30 National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) symposium on Capitol Hill, which displayed the increasingly sophisticated array of United States and international nuclear test monitoring equipment and technology. The event also included remarks from a bipartisan collection of congressmen—Senators Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.)—and the Acting Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and…
Authored by on November 14, 2016
The UN Security Council Resolution (eventually adaopted as UNSC Resolution 2310) on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was introduced by the United States and adopted despite opposition from some U.S. senators and representatives. On Sept. 7, the Senate Foregin Relations Committee held a hearing on President Obama's proposal for a UN Security Council resolution reinforcing the CTBT, trying to ascertain the legality or appropriateness of the proposal. The witnesses were Stephen Rademaker, principal, of The Podesta Group and Michael Krepon, co-founder and senior advisor of the Stimson Center.
Authored by on September 24, 2016
The UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2310, which reaffirmed the international moratorium on nuclear weapon testing, on Sept. 23. The resolution followed a Sept. 15 statement by the permanent five members of the UN Security Council committing not to defeat “the object and purpose” of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) as required under customary international law. It also acknowledged the value of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization’s International Monitoring System. “This first-ever, CTBT-specific Security Council resolution (2310) is a very important reaffirmation…