Official on mission to stop all nuclear tests

That’s according to Lassina Zerbo, whose job as head of the Vienna-based “preparatory commission” for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization is to make sure that happens.

“The mandate of the organization is to ban nuclear test explosions once and for all,” he said Monday on his first visit to the Nevada National Security Site, formerly the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

But with nuclear powers such as the United States and China having signed but not ratified the nearly 20-year-old treaty, the other 164 countries that have ratified it are getting impatient.

“The risk for the (treaty) is where people will pull out and say, ‘We’re not going anywhere with this treaty, why should we be in it?'” Zerbo, 52, said.

The French-educated geophysicist from the small west African country of Burkina Faso has worked for the treaty organization for the past 12 years and became its executive secretary three years ago. He came to the Nevada test site as part of a two-fold mission that also took him to the national laboratories in California and New Mexico this week.

His intentions were to get a grasp on how the United States uses “subcritical” experiments involving tiny amounts of plutonium to check the safety and reliability of its stockpile and to learn about the history and current nuclear explosion monitoring and verification efforts underway at the test site.

“We need to allow our constituents to understand where we stand with regard to the United States program” and what U.S. scientists do for the stockpile stewardship program and continue to educate about the test ban treaty, he said.

Blasts from the past

He said he was awed standing next to the giant, signature crater created by the Sedan nuclear device that exploded at the test site in 1962.

The massive crater shows “the energy and the power that comes out of a nuclear explosion even if this was a peaceful one,” he said.

He said he is cautiously optimistic that some day in the near future the treaty will be ratified by all countries with the tools, materials and know-how to build nuclear bombs.

“I think China will ratify it,” he said. “China is probably waiting for the United States. Those are two countries that are watching each other.”

But unless world leaders and their science advisers become more educated and learn to trust the tools and methods in place to verify the treaty, the day it has full force and effect drifts further into the future.

At the same time, Zerbo said, the United States and hopefully other nuclear weapon states will continue to ensure their stockpiles are safe and reliable.

“I think it’s all about timing. It’s about building trust,” he said. “I don’t even want to think of putting myself in a position where I consider those countries will not ratify the treaty,” he said about India, Pakistan — which haven’t signed the treaty — and China, the United States and other nonratifying countries.

The test ban organization has gradually won China’s confidence under Zerbo’s tenure.

“We have built a second international monitoring system facility in China,” he said, noting that China has been providing data to the international monitoring network in Vienna for 10 years.

“I see this as a small step, but as you know a small step from a big country like China is an important step for the international community,” Zerbo said.

He said he doesn’t “believe in a situation where those countries will not ratify the treaty because we are in a world today where nuclear explosions are of the past,” he added.

In the heyday of full-scale weapons testing during the Cold War, the test site became the most nuclear-bombed place on the planet as the U.S. engaged in a race with the Soviet Union to develop weapons for deterring a potential attack.

In all, counting joint nuclear tests with the United Kingdom, there have been 928 at the test site, including 100 devices that exploded in the atmosphere. Altogether with nuclear tests in the South Pacific and elsewhere, the United States has conducted 1,054 nuclear blasts.

On the road to ratification

Officials for the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration said although they don’t normally allow foreign nationals inside the test site, they intend to allow more international treaty verification experts to visit the site to better understand how the treaty can be verified.

“We are looking at ways to use the site more creatively, like with Dr. Zerbo, to be able to demonstrate, not just talk about, but really demonstrate what we are doing here, and what we are doing as a nation in post-stockpile stewardship,” said Anne Harrington, the security administration’s deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation.

She said U.S. scientists conduct experiments to better understand how to use seismology “to identify when somebody does do an underground nuclear explosion. We’ve already demonstrated we do that pretty well with the three North Korean tests.”

The Senate last discussed ratifying the treaty in 1999, so there’s a “huge information gap” given technology improvements over the years and the dwindling institutional knowledge of the Senate. Only 16 senators remain since the last time Congress took up the issue.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Stephen L. Davis, the security administration’s acting deputy administrator for defense programs, said the Senate balked on ratification because “there was a lot of uncertainty at the time about the ability to continue to certify the stockpile” after the ongoing moratorium on full-scale testing took hold in 1992.

A few years later the United States was relying on subcritical experiments and other physics tools coupled with advanced supercomputing technology to certify the stockpile.

“That’s why it’s important to have the conversation again and explain what we can and cannot do in terms of testing to validate the nuclear weapons stockpile,” Davis said.

“At the time even the lab directors were not unanimous in the beliefs on the ability to certify the stockpile,” he said.

Now, the general said, “what the lab directors will tell you is we know more today about how a nuclear weapon works than we knew when we were doing underground testing.”

Contact Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308. Find him on Twitter: @KeithRogers2

Nuclear weapons tests 1945 – 2013

Country                        Total                       Last test

United States*             1,054                       1992

Soviet Union                  715                       1990

United Kingdom               45                       1991

France                           210                       1996

China                              45                       1996

India                                 2                       1998

Pakistan                            2                       1998

North Korea                       3                       2013

* Includes 24 conducted with the United Kingdom

Sources: Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization / Department of Energy