[cdn-nucl-l] Detection of Underground Tests

["Edward Oleen" <eoleen@earthlink.net>]

Mike, the feedback I've gotten from others on the
list includes references to documents which detail
the problem of detecting underground tests: maybe
I should have supplied the references in my
comments. One, supplied by Igor Chichkov (at the
Southwest Research Institute) is here:
ww.ceip.org/files/projects/npp/pdf/conference/pres
entation/Garwin_CTBT.pdf

Another, from our own Adam McLean, is here:
http://earth.agu.org/revgeophys/vander00/node4.htm
l

While neither source exactly spells out the
dimensions of the cavity needed versus the size of
the detonation, they both give reasonable lower
limits - reasonable in the sense that  if one
wants/needs to test a device then there is "room
at the bottom" to get away with it.

If, in addition, one tests in a seismically active
area, which Turkey - Iraq - Iran certainly is,
just after a major quake, there should be enough
seismic "noise", and thus doubt, that only a
release of fission products into the atmosphere
would provide a definitive signature, unless, of
course, one was "unfortunate" enough to have a
"run-away" - to have substantially underestimated
the yield.  And THAT is not a catastrophe, as I
stated in my previous post.