Comprehensive%20Nuclear%20Test%20Ban%20Treaty

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Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

• Lupei Zhu

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Topics

• Treaty negotiation history.
• Detailed summary of the treaty.
• Current status of the treaty.
• Treaty impacts.
• Verification regime.

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CTBT History

• The PTBT in 1963 does not ban underground nuclear
  tests and peaceful nuclear explosions (PNE).
• Negotiations on a comprehensive nuclear-test-ban
  treaty started in 1994 in the Conference on
  Disarmament (CD).
• In June 1996, a final draft treaty was presented
  to the CD. Although an overwhelming majority of
  the CD member states supported the draft, India
  opposed the treaty because of a provision for the
  entry-into-force of the treaty and the lack of a
  commitment by the nuclear-weapon States to
  eliminate nuclear weapons within a specified
  time-frame.
• As a result, in Aug. 1996, Australia submitted
  the identical CTBT draft to the UN General
  Assembly. It was adopted by the UN on Sept. 10,
  1996 and was opened for signature at UN on Sept.
  24, 1996.

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CTBT Summary

• Article I prohibits all nuclear explosions,
  peaceful or military, anywhere. Nuclear explosion
  does not apply to controlled nuclear reactions in
  nuclear reactors or inertial confinement fusion
  experiments.
• Article II establishes CTBTO in Vienna to ensure
  the treaty implementation and verification as
  well as providing a forum.
• Article III focuses on national implementation
  measures.
• Article IV elaborates on the global verification
  regime (IMS and IDC), consultation process, and
  on-site inspection request (which needs to
  specify an area less than 1000 km2 with linear
  distance less than 50 km and requires 30 positive
  votes from 51 council members excluding involved
  states).
• Article V deals with compliance and sanctions.
• Article VI is about settlement of disputes.

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CTBT Summary

• Articles VII and VIII are about amendments and
  review of the treaty (at intervals of 10 years).
  A special provision permits any party to request,
  after ten years into force, permission to conduct
  underground tests for peaceful purpose, but the
  treaty make it extremely unlikely to get
  approval.
• Article IX states that the treaty is of unlimited
  duration and each state party has the right to
  withdraw from it if it decides that extraordinary
  events have jeopardized its supreme interests
  (six-month notice).
• Articles X to XIII deal with signature,
  ratification, and accession.
• Article XIV is about entry into force of the
  treaty 180 days after all 44 Annex 2 States
  (those with nuclear power and research reactors
  as of 1996) ratify the treaty.

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CTBT Status

• As of 2013, 183 nations (out of 196) have signed
  the treaty. 159 of them have ratified it.
• North Korea, India, and Pakistan, three of 44
  Annex-II nations have not signed the treaty.
• Additional 5 Annex-II nations, China, Egypt,
  Iran, Israel, and the US that signed the treaty,
  have not ratified it.
• So it has not entered into force.

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CTBT Impacts

• The treaty mainly affects the five nuclear-weapon
  states and the four non-NPT states (India,
  Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan) because all
  non-nuclear-weapon states of NPT are already
  prohibited from nuclear tests.
• Although China and the US have not ratified CTBT,
  they are prohibited from conducting nuclear
  explosions because under the Vienna Convention on
  the Law of Treaties, a state that signs a treaty
  is bound not to defeat the object and purpose of
  the treaty until such time as the state formally
  announces that it does not intend to ratify the
  treaty. When the US senator failed to ratify
  CTBT, the then President Clinton made it clear
  that he would continue to seek its approval.

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CTBT Impacts

• For the US, the principal concerns on joining
  CTBT are
• the capacity of the US to maintain confidence in
  the safety and reliability of its nuclear
  stockpile and in its nuclear-weapon design and
  evaluation capability in the absence of nuclear
  testing
• the capabilities of the international
  nuclear-test monitoring system and
• the additions to their nuclear-weapon
  capabilities that other countries could achieve
  through nuclear testing at yield levels that
  might escape detection and the potential effect
  of such addition on the US security.

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CTBT Impacts

• To address these concerns, a CTBT committee of
  the National Academy of Sciences concluded in its
  review report that
• the US has the technical capabilities to maintain
  its nuclear-weapon stockpile under the CTBT,
  provided adequate resources are allocated.
• without special evasion efforts, nuclear
  explosions with a yield of 1 kt can be detected
  worldwide.
• very little of the CTBT benefit would be lost in
  the case of clandestine testing because those
  countries that are best able to conduct such
  testing already possess advanced nuclear weapons.
  On the other hand, a no-CTBT regime poses far
  bigger threats to US security.

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CTBT Verification Regime

• The purpose of the verification regime is to
  monitor countries compliance with the CTBT which
  bans all nuclear explosions on Earth.
• The verification regime of CTBT is designed to
  detect any nuclear explosion conducted on Earth
  in the underground, underwater, or in the
  atmosphere.

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The Verification Regime consists of the following
elements

• International Monitoring System (IMS)
• International Data Centre (IDC)
• Global Communication Infrastructure
• Consultation and clarification
• On-Site Inspection
• Confidence-building measures

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The Intl Monitoring System

• It consists of 321 monitoring stations and 16
  laboratories built world wide (see map on next
  page and How IMS works).
• It uses four monitoring technologies
• Seismology
• Hydroacoustics
• Infrasound
• Radionuclide

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The Intl Data Centre

• It is located at the headquarter of the CTBTO in
  Vienna, Austria.
• It processes and analyses the IMS data, and
  produces data bulletins comprising lists of
  seismic-acoustic events and radionuclides
  detected by IMS stations.
• The IDC raw data and products are transmitted to
  the States Signatories.