Bonn 2020 – scientific programme

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AGA: Arbeitsgruppe Physik und Abrüstung

AGA 4: North Korea

AGA 4.2: Invited Talk

Thursday, April 2, 2020, 14:45–15:30, H-HS XVII

Analysis of two controversial putative nuclear tests: North Korea 12 May 2010 and South Indian Ocean 22 September 1979 — •Lars Erik De Geer — Stockholm

In mid-May 2010 CTBT stations at Okinawa, Japan and Ussuriysk, Russia detected very clear radionuclide signals. The nuclides were all daughters of very short-lived xenon isotopes that are abundantly produced in fission. With no other products seen it indicated a very rapid fission event that forcefully pushed the xenon atoms out through a filtering medium that stopped everything non-noble. Later there were corroborating seismic and infrasound evidence published and by using the famous duck test one could say that if it smelled like a nuclear test, shook like a nuclear test and sounded like a nuclear test then it probably was a nuclear test. Forty years ago there was a similar occasion in South Indian Ocean. A satellite saw a double-humped light flash, hydrophones heard a strong signal and iodine-131 was found in Australian sheep thyroids. Applying the duck test again with the three verbs exchanged to "looked, sounded and tasted" we get the same conclusion: it probably was a nuclear test