Top American seismologists have issued a warning in a newly published commentary, suggesting that earthquakes could potentially be used as cover for secret nuclear bomb tests.
The article, published in the latest issue of the “Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America,” was co-authored by Michael from Los Alamos National Laboratory and his colleagues.
According to the article, advanced signal detection technologies can identify underground explosions of 1.7 tons with an accuracy rate of 97%. However, if a natural earthquake occurs approximately 250 kilometers from the explosion site within 100 seconds of the explosion, the success rate of identifying the underground explosion drops to only 37%.
Michael and his colleagues did not base their conclusions on simulated explosion data, but instead utilized explosion and natural earthquake data from the Nevada National Security Site.
However, the article acknowledges that a single earthquake occurring simultaneously is not sufficient to mask a nuclear explosion. Effective nuclear test monitoring requires consideration of multiple factors, such as detecting the presence of certain radioactive isotopes in the atmosphere.
North Korea has conducted six nuclear tests over the past 20 years. On October 9, 2006, North Korea carried out a nuclear test. Two weeks later, a radiation isotope detection station located in Yellowknife, Canada, along the downwind path from the North Korean test site observed an increase in the concentration of xenon-133, a radioactive isotope generated by nuclear fission. The data was also transmitted to the International Data Centre of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) in Vienna, where analysis confirmed that it was a nuclear weapons test.
The idea of nuclear blasts being masked by natural earthquake signals has raised concerns among scientists responsible for monitoring nuclear tests worldwide. Under the terms of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) of 1996, all nuclear explosions are prohibited, whether for military or peaceful purposes.
Translation and Rewrite Production Team