The nuke detectives – New ways to detect covert nuclear weapons
The nuke detectives
AS NUCLEAR blasts go, North Korea’s first test in 2006 was small. The detonation of an underground device produced an explosive force well below one kiloton (less than a tenth of the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945). Even so, the vibrations it caused were recorded half a world away in the centre of Africa. Advances in the sensitivity of seismic sensors and monitoring software are now good enough to distinguish between a distant nuclear detonation and, say, a building being demolished with conventional explosives, says Lassina Zerbo, head of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Test-Ban-Treaty Organisation (CTBTO), the international organisation that seeks to enforce the agreement ratified, so far, by 163 nations.This article appeared in the Technology Quarterly section of the print edition under the headline “The nuke detectives”From the September 5th 2015 editionDiscover stories from this section and more in the list of contentsExplore the edition