Erlangen 2022 – scientific programme
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AGA: Arbeitsgruppe Physik und Abrüstung
AGA 5: Nuclear Verification, Iran, Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
AGA 5.2: Talk
Friday, March 18, 2022, 11:15–11:45, AGA-H19
Onsite Verification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty at Very Low Yields — •Christopher Fichtlscherer1,2, Julien de Troullioud de Lanversin3, and Frank N. von Hippel4 — 1RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany — 2IFSH, Hamburg, Germany — 3Harvard University, Cambridge, U.S. — 4Princeton University, Princeton, U.S.
The United States has accused Russia and suspects China of violating the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) at very low yields. They argue that the violating tests involve supercritical chain reactions that are forbidden under the U.S. interpretation of the treaty. Satellite images could show suspiciously large containment vessels being emplaced in tunnels. But offsite, there would be no detectable physical evidence to differentiate such tests from permitted subcritical tests. However, during onsite inspections, gamma emissions from the fission and neutron-activation products in the containment vessel could be measured to infer the energy released through fission during the test. Here a potential verification onsite measurement method is presented and tested in a theoretical scenario using the open-source OpenMC transport and ONIX depletion code.