Comprehensive Test ban Treaty

This industry is on the decline due to the peace-time agreements and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, (CTBT). Under this agreement, enrichment of UF6 is restricted to lower grade U235 for reactor fuel to be used in commercial electric power generation. In North America, there is an antinuclear atmosphere, hence it is less likely to see the expansion or additions of nuclear power plants in the USA. Whereas China, India, and East European countries may require additional nuclear fuel for their fast growing industries and electrification of the rural areas. 

A clear line needs to be drawn between permitted and forbidden experiments with pure-fusion explosions. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty does not define matter, and several governments have found it too difficult to anticipate future technological developments to make their own definitive interpretation. 

Sullivan, J.D., The comprehensive test ban treaty. Physics Today, March (1998) 24. 

Aarnio, P.A., Application of the Nuclide Identification System SHAMAN in Monitoring the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, J. Radioanal. Nucl. Chem., 235, 95, 1998. 

Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTB F)t 1996 148 signatories, 7 ratifications (as of 1 October 1997) bans any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion. 

A variety of on-site and remote sensor technologies can be used for verification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, with each offering unique sensing capabilities. The technologies can be used to search for nuclear explosions conducted in the atmosphere, underwater, underground, or outer space. The use of two or more sensors of different types increases the reliability of detection, and can help identify otherwise ambiguous events. 

There are very many applications of gamma-ray spectrometry. Having already discussed environmental measurements in Chapter 16, in this chapter I discuss a number which, to me, seem to be of particular interest. Each of them deserves a much broader treatment but time and space limit me to a general introduction. Each of them draws upon the principles developed in previous chapters, the idea being to illustrate how academic, and perhaps theoretical, ideas find their expression in practical uses. As it happens, the examples are related in the sense that in these applications gamma spectrometry could be said to help make ordinary life safer measurements in support of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) help to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, waste monitoring helps to ensure that radioactive waste is disposed of properly and safeguards measurements make sure that nuclear material is properly accounted for. 

CTBTO Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organisation A group, based at the IAEA Vienna, which monitors nuclear explosions worldwide. 

The network for monitoring compliance with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) traced the dispersion of airborne radionuclide gases and particles reaching eastern Russia after two days and the west coast of the USA two days after that. On 20.03.2011 the CTBTO station in Iceland detected radioactive traces moving towards northern Europe and Scandinavia. In Germany, the first traces of the artificial radionuclides 1-131 and Cs-134 were determined in air filter samples at the federal office for radiation protection s atmospheric monitoring station at Schauinsland on 23.03.2011. ... 

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