Forensic Seismology Supports the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

A team of Lawrence Livermore scientists has worked to develop and refine monitoring technologies for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The treaty, still to be ratified by the United States, forbids all nuclear tests (including those intended for peaceful purposes) and creates an international monitoring network to search for evidence of clandestine nuclear explosions. Livermore's efforts are part of a Department of Energy program focusing on advanced methods to precisely detect, locate, and characterize events in key areas of the world that could be clandestine nuclear tests. Livermore scientists have contributed significantly to the Knowledge Base, a database for managing, storing, and retrieving vital data-especially seismic, hydroacoustic, infrasound, and radionuclide information-from monitoring stations. Personnel at the U.S. National Data Center at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida, the nation's future test ban treaty monitoring facility, will use these data in cooperation with the CTBT's International Data Center in Vienna, Austria, to locate and identify possible CTBT violations.

A Short History of the Laboratory at Livermore

What is today Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory opened officially in September 1952, less than six years before the death of its namesake Ernest Orlando Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron and winner of a Nobel Prize. A branch of the University of California Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, the laboratory at Livermore was founded by the Atomic Energy Commission at the urging of Lawrence (the Radiation Laboratory's founder), Edward Teller, and other top U.S. scientists in response to the first Soviet Union nuclear weapon test in August 1949. Its first mission was to join Los Alamos in the development of thermonuclear weapons.
The laboratory at Livermore separated from its Berkeley parent in 1971 and became a DOE national laboratory in 1980. Throughout its history, its national security mission has remained constant. That mission has grown to include a variety of basic and applied scientific research and development in the national interest. During its more than four decades of change and growth, Lawrence Livermore has remained true to its dedication to the finest scientific achievement for the security of the nation.

Research Highlights

The X-Ray Laser: from Underground to Tabletop

Down-to-Earth Testing of Microsatellites

and LLNL Disclaimers

UCRL-52000