Nuclear weapons test detection: Ensuring a verifiable treaty. Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty research and development program 1995 progress report

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has an active program to provide technologies for monitoring and verifying a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). DOE technologies will significantly increase the nation`s capability to identify potential nuclear explosions with high confidence and with minimal false alarms. This report presents the highlights of the first year of this program. The primary objectives of the CTBT monitoring system are to deter nuclear explosions in all environments (underground, underwater, or in the atmosphere) and, if such an explosion does occur, to detect, locate, and identify its source. The system is designed to provide credible evidence to national authorities to aid in resolving ambiguities and to serve as the basis for appropriate action. To collect this evidence, one must develop technologies that can detect and identify the signals from a nuclear test against a background of hundreds of thousands of benign events. The monitoring system must have high sensitivity to detect the events of interest and, to minimize false alarms, it must identify those events with a high level of confidence