News
10-08-2008 10:34
Press release of the conference “Monitoring of Nuclear Tests and their Consequences”, Borovoye, 2008.
This Conference is organized by the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources of RK, National Nuclear Center, Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, Atomic Energy Commissariat, France, Institute of Computational Mathematics and Mathematical Geophysics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science, and the Institute for the Dynamics of Geospheres RAS.
Borovoye village - the meeting place of different scientists was not picked up by chance. This is the very place where an experimental seismic base to monitor nuclear explosions at various test sites worldwide had been created at Soviet time; new equipment tests took place and events detection and discrimination methods had been developed here as well. This is the very system that had been most sensitive among other stations of the former USSR; its exploitation experience and data played significant role in Geneva negotiations of 1958-1961 to limit nuclear weapon tests.
Kazakhstan withheld nuclear power status and took political, technical and scientific obligations along with other countries to control compliance with nuclear safety in the world.
Objects of the former Soviet Special Control Service for Nuclear Tests, located within the Republic of Kazakhstan, including Borovoye Observatory, were given to the Institute of Geophysical Research of the National Nuclear Center in 1994. Kazakhstani nuclear monitoring system for the last 14 years was significantly upgraded. Actually a new National monitoring system has been established. Seismic and infrasound arrays in western, southern, central, and eastern Kazakhstan have been installed and commissioned with the help of foreign and international organizations. These arrays meet highest worldwide standards from the technical point of view. Data Center that was created and operated in Almaty completely fulfills its functions of Kazakhstani National Data Center under the International Monitoring System. It serves as a link between Kazakhstani monitoring stations and different national and international centers for round-the-clock data and processing results of this data exchange purposes.
Nowadays Kazakhstani monitoring network is one of the best in CIS and worldwide. The network's data is applied by many National and International Data Centers; it is available for researchers worldwide who deal with geodynamical, seismic hazard and many other issues.
Three main directions will be covered at the conference. They are 1) development and creation of new systems and technologies of nuclear tests monitoring; 2) methodology and results of events detection, assessment and discrimination by means of different observation methods and 3) consequences investigation of past nuclear explosions and monitoring data application to evaluate seismic and radiation hazard.
The topic of the conference is crucial for Kazakhstan. From one hand it is related to creation in Kazakhstan one of the largest nuclear test site at Soviet time. There have been more than 450 nuclear tests in former Semipalatinsk Test Site since 1949 till 1989. Besides there have been tens of so called "peaceful" nuclear explosions within Kazakhstan. To study processes happening in bowels of the earth next to underground nuclear explosion places is of great importance from ecology, social and geodynamical consequences points of view. National Nuclear Center has lately organized systematic activities to investigate dynamics of post-explosive processes, to develop their models and to justify monitoring system in terms of such processes development.
From the other hand, topic of the conference involves issues of data application obtained by nuclear test monitoring system in civil and peaceful purposes, mainly to solve seismic safety tasks. This task is extremely important for Kazakhstan as the major part of the territory is seismically active; very strong earthquakes occurred here in past with magnitude more than 8 (Chiliksk earthquake in 1889, Keminskoye earthquake in 1911). Even now seismic activity in some regions of Kazakhstan is rather high. Two earthquakes with magnitude up to 8 in epicenter have been detected in Kazakhstan for previous 5 years. Powerful earthquakes also occurred in Kyrgyzstan in 2006 and in China in 2008. Kazakhstani seismic network provides great opportunities to develop new methods of earthquake processing area detection, assessment of seismic hazard. One should point out the significance of this network for seismicity monitoring purposes within some areas in Kazakhstan, which were earlier considered as seismic free, but due to distributed network stations and observations over the past years these areas witnessed large earthquakes with magnitude up to 6 in epicenter (in 2001 and 2008). New data obtained by means of NNC RK monitoring network made it important revise seismic map of Kazakhstan territory and therefore revise construction standards for various regions.
More than 50 reports of scientists and specialists from different countries have been submitted. Reports have also been submitted from representatives of organizations that closely cooperated with Kazakhstan while observation system and Data Center creation and they keep close and fruitful cooperation today. These organizations as follows: Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), Air Force Technical Application Center, USA (AFTAC), Norway Seismology Center (NORSAR), Atomic Energy Commissariat, France, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbian University, USA (LDEO), Geophysical Service of the Russian Academy of Science. Outstanding scientists and leading specialists will contribute to the Conference on behalf of these organizations - Lassino Zerbo Director of International Data Center, CTBTO, Paul Richards LDEO professor, Robert Kemerait, AFTAC scientist, professor Frode Ringdal, NORSAR scientific director, academician Boris Mikhailenko, Director of Institute of Computational Mathematics and Mathematical Geophysics of Siberian Branch RAS, professor Vladimir Utkin, RAS Advisor from Institute of Geophysics of Ural branch RAS, Oleg Starovoit, Leader of Geophysical Service RAS and others.
Since the previous conference in Borovoye (in 2006) there has been a nuclear test. It was done on 9th of October, 2006 in North Korea. This event was sort of an examination to the current global monitoring system. A number of reports will be dedicated to registration results of this explosion by means of international and national monitoring networks. These reports will provide analysis of available localization assessments, test yields and system disadvantages.
Report presentations and joint discussion of the results will give a new pulse to development of crucial and significant direction of geophysical research in Kazakhstan - nuclear test monitoring and data application in Kazakhstani applied research activities.