Nuclear Reset - Program on Strategic Stability Evaluation (POSSE)

Chapter 20. <strong>Nuclear</strong> Testing391as currently required under the Treaty, but also to clarify the actualintent behind the events that elicited suspicion.As a method to verify that nuclear testing was not being carriedout, China, in particular, suggested including satellite surveillanceand electromagnetic pulse (EMP) monitoring in the verificationmechanism. However, in the end, technical experts in a majorityof the countries declared such measures excessive, since their inclusionin the technologies used for the international monitoring systemwould have significantly increased the costs of producing and operatingsuch a system, would have led to additional false alarms, andwould not have substantially improved the capabilities of the verificationsystem in detecting Treaty violations. Nevertheless, the finaltext of the Treaty did contain a provision implying the future possibilitythat the implementation of new technologies in the verificationsystem, including satellite surveillance and EMP monitoring, wouldbe allowed once their capabilities have been studied from the stand-point of increasing the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of the CTBTverification system as a whole.Returning to the issue of test sites, in determining the compositionand configuration of the main technical component of the internationalverification mechanism, it must be noted that it provedpossible to successfully satisfy the so-called “equal transparency”requirement for the existing nuclear test sites to the IMS’s technicalsystems. The fact is that historically, during the years of nucleartesting, the Novaya Zemlya nuclear test site had been more preciselymonitored by numerous seismic stations in Scandinavia having lowthresholds of sensitivity that provided highly reliable data on NovayaZemlya. By contrast, the Nevada Test Site could only be monitoredwith the assistance of tele-seismic devices, which combined withthe geological conditions at the test site yielded ed much less transparency.These conclusions were subsequently taken into consideration,and it was decided to include into the IMS those stations (in particular,the Maine seismic station in the United States) that would ensureadherence to the principle of equal transparency at all test sites.Work on the Treaty was extremely complicated, proceeding undera principle of strict consensus among dozens 1 of participantsin the negotiations, the interests of which had to be scrupulouslyconsidered but at times were diametrically opposed to one another.As a result, the working draft of the Treaty that these discussions producedcontained over a thousand parenthetical comments reflecting