Test sites, seismic signals and subcritical experiments: how tests are detected, what the test ban allows, and why the old test sites got busy again.
During the Reagan administration, the 1974 Threshold Test Ban Treaty was in Senate limbo, mired in arguments over Soviet cheating. The TTBT limited underground tests to yields no greater than 150 kilotons, but the U.S. intelligence community did not have…
If you liked reading Frederick Forsyth’s Day of the Jackal, wait until you see the new monograph by Bruno Tertrais, A “Nuclear Coup”? France, the Algerian War and the April 1961 Nuclear Test.
I made an appearance at the end of Glenn Kessler’s fact check on Mark Kirk’s bizarre claim that Nelson Mandela abandoned South Africa’s nuclear weapons program — something we’ve been scratching our heads over for a while. While I am…
The Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC) is the intelligence entity that looks for nuclear explosions, although if you are a regular reader you probably know that already. You probably also know that, even by the standards of the US…
I am off to Cambridge for less than 24 hours to participate in a workshop entitled, “Getting to Zero: US and Chinese Perspectives on Near Term Cooperative Steps to a World Free of Nuclear Weapons.” I’ve been spending a lot…
There was a minor dustup on Twitter between my colleague, Jon Wolfsthal, and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Like many discussions on Twitter, 140 characters at a time just didn’t get the job done. At issue is an important article…
The United States intelligence community, or a portion of it, has concluded that Russia is conducting very low-yield nuclear tests. Aaron and Jeffrey discuss past allegations of nuclear testing, open source monitoring of Russia’s nuclear test site at Novaya Zemlya…
The Wall Street Journal reported that “China might be secretly conducting nuclear tests with very low explosive power” based on the State Department’s 2020 Annual Compliance Report, but that is not quite what the report actually says. Jeffrey and Anne…
John Hudson and Paul Sonne at the Washington Post broke the story that Trump administration officials have discussed conducting additional nuclear tests in the United States. Jeffrey and Anne discuss why this is a bad idea, how this would disproportionately…
This is the written summary accompanying the satellite images we provided to CNN about the worrisome levels of activity we see at Russian, Chinese and US nuclear test sites.
Road trip to Vegas. As part of an NGO transparency visit, NNSA opened up the Nevada Test Site to a group of international nuclear weapons experts, including one Dr. Jeffrey Lewis. Jeffrey goes through what he saw: P Tunnel, The…
Donald Trump directed “the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis” with other countries. The Department of War doesn’t test nuclear weapons, the Department of Energy does all the time in lots of different…
U.S. Undersecretary of State Tom DiNanno accused China of conducting decoupled, low-yield nuclear tests including on June 22, 2020. Aaron and Jeffrey talk about seismic monitoring of nuclear tests, the role of hydronuclear testing, and what might be going on. …
