2016-2017 Critical Issues Forum (CIF) Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty: Contributing towards a World Free of Nuclear Weapons by Jean du Preez 1. History of Nuclear Testing, Nuclear Testing and the Arms Race

5. Educational resources to train the next generation of CTBT experts “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds“

From the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita as recalled by Dr Robert Oppenheimer

Trinity test: 16 July 1945 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuRvBoLu4t0 Absolute Devastation: Hiroshima & Nagasaki

Hiroshima Nagasaki 6 August 1945- “Little Boy” 9 August 1945- “Fat Man”

118,000 killed, 80,000 wounded 74,000 killed, 75,000 wounded The Destruction of Hiroshima bomb (13Kt) • 0-1.0 km: 86% killed • 1-2.5 km: 27% killed • 0-1.3 km: prompt radiation zone • 0-2.1 km: 3rd degree burns • 0-2.7 km: 2nd degree burns Heat: 6000 degrees Celcius • 0-0.3 km: 50 psi overpressure – destroys everything • 0-0.7 km: 10 psi - sweep everything in a high-rise building onto streets • 0-1.2 – 1.6 km: 3 - 5 psi - destroy brick houses & shatter windowpanes Testing and the start of the nuclear arms race

Trinity Test (20 kt) UK USSR Tsar Bomba USSR JOE Hurricane (57 mt) (22 kt) (25 kt)

China tests at Lop Nur

1945 1949 1952 1961 1964

1960 1962 1974 US Mike Hiroshima & (10.4 mt) Blue Little Feller Nagasaki (Davy Crockett) Dessert Rat (0.01 – 0.02 kt) Smiling France test Budha in Algeria (12Kt): India

70Kt For more on nuclear testing over time, see the CTBTO website Scale comparison

U.S. B83 bomb Chinese DF-5A warhead Soviet Tzar Bomba 1200 kt 4,5 mt 50 mt Hiroshima 13 kt 2047 nuclear explosions

One test every 9 days for 50 years.

“1945-1998” by Isao Hashimoto

https://youtu.be/LLCF7vPanrY

Sites of nuclear explosions

Late 1950s – early 1960s: peak in testing

Atmospheric tests Underground Underwater tests tests Atmospheric testing: ~ 25%

French test in South Pacific From early nuclear weapons …..

Little Boy: Hiroshima Fatman: Nagasaki …. to small, extra large and complex weapon systems

0.01Kt 50.000 kt

Testing is required

W87 /88 warhead – 150 - 300 kt

Testing motivations

1. Weapons effect 2. Safety tests 3. Weapons development • Performance testing • Weaponization testing • Physics tests 4. Political motivations • International politics • Security and testing • Domestic politics 5. Peaceful nuclear explosions (PNEs)

6 Weapon Effects Operation Crossroads

• 2nd and 3rd U.S. nuclear tests (1946) • Test the weapon effect of a nuclear bomb • Able (30 June, air dropped) • Baker (24 July, first underwater test, 23 kT) Able: 23Kt • “Fat man” design (used in Nagasaki)

Baker: 21 Kt Plumbbob/Stokes

• Conducted 7 August 1957 • 19 kT • Officially classified as weapons development test, but clearly also involved studying weapon effects. Safety Tests

Ensure weapon only works when its supposed to

• “One-Point” Safe • A nuclear weapon is one-point safe if, when the High Explosive inside the weapon is initiated and detonated at any single point, the probability of producing a nuclear yield exceeding 2 kilograms TNT equivalent is less than 1 in one million

• “Insensitive” high explosives • designed to withstand stimuli representative of severe but credible accidents. The current range of stimuli are shock, (from bullets, fragments and shaped charge jets), heat (from fires or an adjacent thermal events) and adjacent detonating munitions

• Permissive Action Link (PAL) • security device for nuclear weapons. Its purpose is to prevent unauthorized arming or detonation of the nuclear weapon Weapons Development Weapon Development Tests

• Performance tests • Testing of basic design concepts • e.g. Trinity (16 July 1945)

• Physics tests • Understanding physics necessary to develop more advanced designs

• Weaponization tests • Testing of weaponized (smaller, lighter, more robust etc.) designs

Performance Testing

• Ivy/Mike (31 October 1951) • First performance test of “true” two-stage thermonuclear device • 82-ton refrigerator of cooled hydrogen isotopes • 10.4 MT Ivy Mike

TX-16/EC-16 Experimental/Emergency Capability Small number produced MK 17/24 Mass produced 200/105 Weaponization Testing

• Dominic/Frigate Bird (6 May 1962) • Particularly stark example of weaponization test • Only U.S. test of ballistic missile with live nuclear warhead (vast majority of U.S. tests from fixed platforms) • 600 kT delivered over a range of 1,174 miles

Physics Tests

• The development of “advanced” nuclear designs is generally argued to require testing to further understanding of the underlying physics. • For example, fusion physics and radiation flow

• First Soviet thermonuclear device (RDS-6) • 4th Soviet test, detonated on 12 August 1953 (almost exactly 4 years after 1st test) • 400 kT one-stage design (not a “true” two-stage design)

Political Motivations International Politics Of Testing

• Three possible motives for developing nuclear weapons (Sagan, 1996): • Security • Norms • Domestic politics

• Whatever reason or combination of reasons motivates a state to proliferate, testing would further its goals.

• Political and technical reasons for testing generally coexist. Security and Testing

• Potential strategies of nuclear coercion: • Deterrence (making threats to prevent another party from changing the status quo) • Compellence (making threats to try to change the status quo)

• Requires credible (implicit or explicit) nuclear threats.

• Testing often seen as necessary to make such threats • Announced first tests (China, UK, France, India, Pakistan, DPRK). • Counter-example: Israel

• Many pictures of tests declassified shortly afterwards. Domestic Politics and Testing

• Decisions to proliferate and develop more advanced nuclear weapons inevitably connected to domestic politics. • Many examples of domestic opponents accusing a government of weakness for failing to take nuclear weapons development sufficiently seriously.

• Nuclear tests can relieve domestic pressure. Peaceful Nuclear Explosions

OSI Inspection Trainees 2016 PNEs and Treaty Law

• Article V of NPT: • “…potential benefits from any peaceful applications of nuclear explosions will be made available to non-nuclear-weapon States Party to the Treaty on a nondiscriminatory basis…the charge to such Parties for the explosive devices used will be as low as possible and exclude any charge for research and development.”

• PNEs prohibited under CTBT.

PNEs: A Very Brief History

• First U.S. PNE: 10 December 1961 • First Soviet PNE: 15 January 1965 • Peaceful nuclear explosions category is very broad: • Excavation, earth moving, cavity formation • Some cavities apparently still used for gas storage in Russia. • Oil and gas stimulation • Extinguishing oil fires • Seismic sounding …

Peaceful Nuclear Explosions (PNE) – Operation Ploughshares

Sedan Test Pan-Atomic Canal

Chagan Lake Project Chariot US/Soviet Testing Programs Soviet Union United States Number % Number % PNEs 173 (156) 18 42 (42) 4 Effects 70 (53) 7 100 (100) 9 Safety 42 (25) 4 92 (92) 8 Development 684 (481) 71 891 (891) 78 Joint 0 (0) 0 24 (24) 2 969 (715) 1,149 (1,149)

# Explosions (# Tests) • The US and a number of other NWS conduct experiments as part of its Stockpile Stewardship Program to test the reliability and safety of its nuclear arsenals. These are not considered to be nuclear explosives test, and are not covered by the CTBT • Hydronuclear tests study nuclear materials under the conditions of explosive shock compression. They can create sub-critical conditions, or supercritical conditions with yields ranging from negligible all the way up to a substantial fraction of full weapon yield.[4] • Sub-critical (or cold) tests are any type of tests involving nuclear materials and possibly high- explosives (like those mentioned above) that purposely result in no yield. • Since the end of U.S. nuclear explosive testing in 1992, investments in science-based Stockpile Stewardship have led to dramatic improvements in simulation capabilities. Computers have become at least a hundred- thousand times more powerful, and modern integrated design codes now more realistically capture the behavior of real nuclear devices. Sub-critical experiment at Nevada National Security Site The consequences of nuclear testing

Tsar Bomba Baneberry

Starfish Prime Consequences of Testing: When something goes wrong

Bikini Atoll – Castle Bravo

Castle Bravo

Lucky Dragon Number 5 Consequences of Testing: The downwind effect

Estimation of I-131 Dosis

Operation Buster Baby Tooth Study

Dr Louise Reiss “Any person living in the contiguous United States since 1951 has been exposed to radioactive fallout, and all organs and tissues of the body have received some radiation exposure.”

"Report on the Feasibility of a Study of the Health Consequences to the American Population from Nuclear Weapons Tests Conducted by the United States and Other Nations.” Department of Health and Human Services and National Cancer Institute Halflife of Pu-239: 24,100 years Nuclear Weapons Stockpile

Source: Ploughshares Fund