Last week, a team of engineers at the Nevada National Security Site detonated an explosive device underground in hopes of improving the U.S. ability to detect lower-yield nuclear explosions elsewhere in the world.
A National Nuclear Security Administration-led team conducted what the agency called a “subsurface chemical explosion” in the P tunnel in Area 12 of the Nevada Site on Oct. 18. The test uses chemical high explosives and radiotracers to conduct the experiment, the NNSA said.
The experiment was designed to validate new predictive explosion models and detection algorithms, the NNSA said. The test explosion was closely monitored and measured with an array of sensors including accelerometers, seismometers, infrasound sensors, electromagnetic sensors, chemical and radiotracer samplers, and meteorological sensors.
“These experiments advance our efforts to develop new technology in support of U.S. nuclear nonproliferation goals,” said Corey Hinderstein, NNSA’s deputy administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation. “They will help reduce global nuclear threats by improving the detection of underground nuclear explosive tests.”
The United States has not exploded a nuclear bomb since 1992 and NNSA officials say there are no plans to do so in the future. NNSA researchers instead rely on computer simulations and analysis of sub-critical explosions to infer the performance of the U.S. nuclear stockpile.
Since the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CBTB) took effect in 1992, NNSA has performed 33 subcritical experiments at the Nevada’s U1a complex. Different from the recent chemical explosion, those experiments apply conventional high explosives to nuclear materials to determine their explosive properties without a full-yield nuclear explosion. The Oct. 18 detonation did not include nuclear material.
Two more tests are scheduled for the fiscal year that runs from Oct. 1, 2023 to Sept. 30, 2024, Hinderstein said in June. The next high-explosive experiment was planned to take place late in fiscal 2023.
Researchers from other NNSA sites and labs also took part in the experiment, including some from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories. The University of Nevada at Reno, the University of Arizona and the University of Texas at Austin also were involved with the test explosion.
The Special Operations and Research Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Engineer Research and Development Center of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also participated in the project, the NNSA said.
Seismic data collected from this and other similar experiments are made available to researchers around the globe for analysis at the EarthScope Consortium website.
