AUTOMATED AEROSOL SAMPLING AND ANALYSIS FOR THE COMPREHENSIVE TEST BAN TREATY

Detecting nuclear debris from a nuclear weapon exploded in or substant ially vented to the Earth's atmosphere constitutes the most certain in dication that a violation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has occ urred. For this reason, a radionuclide portion of the International Mo nitoring system is being designed and implemented. The IMS will monito r aerosols and gaseous xenon isotopes to detect atmospheric and underg round tests, respectively. The monitoring network will be composed of a number of manual or automatic stations which have the capacity to sa mple large volumes of air each day and make sensitive gamma-ray spectr oscopy measurements of the samples collected. In addition, a number of Certified Laboratories will perform confirmatory measurements on samp les that show detectable quantities of fission products. This may be a ccomplished by measuring (instrumentally or by radiochemical means) ce rtain isotopes which discriminate weapons debris from reactor accident s and other releases of fission products.