Atomic-Blast Detection Network Grows After Iran’s ‘Spy’ Charge
By Jonathan Tirone

Feb. 18 (Bloomberg) — A global network of United Nations atomic-blast detection stations, criticized by Iran for being used to spy on the Gulf country, is expanding its capacity to monitor explosions.

The organization will install about 20 new stations around the world this year, Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization spokeswoman Annika Thunborg said today in a telephone interview.

“If this is spying, it is spying of all countries who can participate in verification monitoring,” Tibor Toth, head of the organization bringing the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty into force, said in a briefing late yesterday.

The Vienna-based body drew criticism in December after it built seismic station PS44 near Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, a “few kilometers” from the Central Asian country’s southern border with Iran. The site adds to the group’s 337 stations worldwide designed to detect seismic activity, sound waves and radiation caused by nuclear explosions.

Abolfazl Zohrehvand, an adviser to Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, on Dec. 9 criticized the CTBTO as a “security and espionage” group, Iranian Press TV reported.

The world’s two top nuclear weapons powers, the U.S. and Russia, host CTBTO monitoring stations on their territory. The U.S. has 41 facilities while Russia has more than 30, Toth said.

Data from the organization’s $1 billion network goes to member states who can analyze wave patterns and signals for suspicious activity, Lassina Zerbo, the group’s data chief, said in an interview. Researchers have accessed the data for other uses, from tracking blue whales in the Atlantic to detecting rocket launches.

‘Unique Network’

“Our technology can be used for a lot of similar scientific applications that are beyond the treaty and that are beyond our mandate,” said Zerbo, a geophysicist by training. “People are using it because we have a unique network.”

In addition to expanding the number of stations, the CTBTO is adding more analytical power to its data streams, Zerbo said.

Iran is one of the nine countries that have yet to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. There have been more than 2,000 nuclear test explosions worldwide since the Manhattan Project’s Trinity test in the U.S. in July 1945. The last detonation occurred May 25, when North Korea said it conducted a test, an event that was detected at 61 of the UN organization’s seismic stations.

Treaty Holdouts

The other eight countries that must ratify the treaty for it to come into force are China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and the U.S.

Toth called on the nine holdout nations to ratify the accord and said countries in lower stages of development have the most to gain.

“The small countries are benefiting for the first time from this unprecedented system of around 340 facilities around the world and for the first time they know what’s going on,” said Toth, a Hungarian diplomat.

The CTBTO was set up in 1996 to help bring the nuclear test ban treaty into force. Former President Bill Clinton, who failed to get the accord ratified by the Senate, called the treaty “the longest-sought, hardest-fought prize in the history of arms control.”

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