Technical Issues Related to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (2002) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Pages 1-12
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 1... ...
. the capacity of the United States to maintain confidence in the safety and reliability of its nuclear stockpile and in ~ ' absence of nuclear testing; the capabilities of the international nuclear-test monitonug system (with and without augmentation by national technical means and by instrumentation in use for scientific purposes, and taking into account the possibilities for decoupling nuclear explosions from surrounding geologic media)
|
From page 2... ...
While it is prudent to expect that age-related defects affecting stockpile reliability may occur increasingly as the average age of weapons in the stockpile increases in the years ahead, and that such defects may combine in a nonlinear or otherwise poorly specified manner, nuclear testing is not needed to discover these problems and is not likely to be needed to address them. Remanufacture to original specifications is the preferred remedy for the age-related defects that materialize in the stockpile.
|
From page 3... ...
In order to avoid the introduction of interference effects between nuclear and non-nuclear components, prudence dictates that a similar discipline be practiced in regard to any changes in design or location of nonnuclear components situated in proximity to the nuclear subsystem. Confidence in the safety and reliability of stockpiled nuclear weapons depended far more on activities in the first five categories just described than on nuclear testing even when numbers and kinds of nuclear tests were essentially unconstrained.
|
From page 4... ...
Most importantly, their costs should not be allowed to crowd out expenditures on the core stewardship functions, including the capacity for weapon remanufacture, upon which continued confidence in the enduring stockpile most directly depends. Although a properly focused SSP is capable, in our judgment, of maintaining the required confidence in the enduring stockpile under a CTBT, we do not believe that it will lead to a capability to certify new nuclear subsystem designs for entry into the stockpile without nuclear testing—unless by accepting a substantial reduction in the confidence in weapon performance associated with certification up until now, or a return to earlier, simpler, single-stage design concepts, such as gun-type weapons.
|
From page 5... ...
It seems to us that the argument to the contrary that is, the argument that improvements in the capabilities that underpin confidence in the absence of nuclear testing wall inevitably lose the race with the growing needs from an aging stockpile underestimates the current capabilities for stockpile stewardship, underestimates the effects of current and likely future rates of progress in improving these capabilities, and overestimates the role that nuclear testing ever played (or would ever be likely to play) in ensuring stockpile reliability.
|
From page 6... ...
And evaders must reckon with the high sensitivity of the global TMS, with the possibility of detection by regional seismic networks operated for scientific purposes, and with the chance that a hi~her-than-exnected yield will lead to detection because their cavity was sized for a smaller one. O ~ ~ , ~ As for mine masking, chemical explosions in mines are typically ripple-fired and thus relatively inefficient at generating seismic signals compared to single explosions of the same total yield.
|
From page 7... ...
Having to conduct multiple tests greatly increases the chance of detection by any and all of the measures in use, from the TMS, to national technical means, to sensors in use for other purposes. It can be expected, in future decades, that monitoring capabilities will significantly improve beyond those described here, as instrumentation, communications, and methods of analysis improve, as data archives expand and experience increases, and as the limited regions associated with serious evasion scenarios become the subject of close attention and better understanding.
|
From page 8... ...
· India and Pakistan could use their option of testing, as non-parties to the NonProliferation Treaty, to perfect boosted fission weapons and thermonuclear weapons, greatly increasing the destructive power available from a given quantity of fissile material and the destructive power deliverable by a given force of aircraft or missiles. (Of course they might also do this under a CTBT that they had not signed, but the absence of a CTBT and the resumption of testing by others would make it politically much easier for them to do so.)
|
From page 9... ...
Perhaps most importantly, in a world in which nuclear testing had been renounced and the NPT remained intact, nuclear proliferation would be opposed by a powerful political norm in which Nuclear-Weapon States and other parties to the NPT and CTBT would find their interests aligned. In the case we now wish to compare to the no-CTBT and rigorously-observed-CTBT reference cases that of clandestine testing under a CTBT, within the limits imposed by the monitoring system we distinguish between two classes of potential cheaters, those with greater prior nuclear testing experience and/or design sophistication and those with lesser prior testing experience anchor sophistication.
|
From page 10... ...
If really serious reliability problems that only could be resolved through testing did materialize in the Russian or Chinese arsenal, moreover, it is unlikely that the degree of testing needed to resolve them could be successfully concealed. In contrast to the cases of Russia or China, where their substantial prior experience with testing makes it at least plausible that they might be able to conceal some substantial degree of testing at yields below the threshold of detection, states with lesser prior test experience and/or design sophistication are much less likely to succeed in concealing significant tests.
|
From page 11... ...
security—sophisticated nuclear weapons in the hands of many more adversaries than the worst-case scenario of clandestine testing in a CTBT regime, within the constraints posed by the monitoring system.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.