Locating Nuclear Explosions at the Chinese Test Site near Lop Nor

Science & Global Security

Volumn 5, Issue 2, 1995, Pages 205-244

  Gupta, Vipin ^a  

^a U S DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0000642797     PISSN: 08929882     EISSN: 15477800     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/08929889508426423     Document Type: Article

References (47)

1. Vipin Gupta, “Future Chinese Nuclear Tests on the Horizon,” Trust & Verify 30, July/August 1992, pp. 2–3 (Presented at the 4th International Summer School on Science and World Affairs, August 28, 1992, Shanghai); R. Jeffrey Smith, “China Planning a Nuclear Test, US Aides Say: Nations Pressure Beijing to Observe Moratorium,” Washington Post, September 17, 1993, p. Al.
2. John Matzko, “Geology of the Chinese Nuclear Test Site near Lop Nor, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China,” Engineering Geology 36, 1994, pp. 173–181 (Presented at the 14th Annual PL/DARPA Seismic Research Symposium, September 16–18, 1992, Tucson, Arizona).
3. Robert Norris, Andrew Burrows, and Richard Fieldhouse, Nuclear Weapons Databook volume V: British, French, and Chinese Nuclear Weapons (Boulder: Westview Press 1994), pp. 350–356.
4. John Murphy, “Yield Estimation and Bias at the Chinese Lop Nor Test Site,” pp. 1–21 (Presented at the 14th Annual PL/DARPA Seismic Research Symposium, September 18, 1992, Tucson, Arizona).
5. The P-wave is a compressional body wave that travels through the Earth's crust and mantle.
6. bof Chinese nuclear tests recorded in the ISC bulletins through 1988. A. Douglas, P. Marshall, and K. Jones, “Body-Wave Magnitudes and Locations of Explosions at the Chinese Test Site, 1967-1989,” AWE Report No. O 12/93, December 1993, pp. 1–19.
7. Vipin Gupta, “Assessment of the Chinese Nuclear Test Site near Lop Nor,” Jane's Intelligence Review 5 (8), August 1993, pp. 378–381. Vipin Gupta and Philip McNab, “Sleuthing from Home,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 49 (10), December 1993, pp. 44–47. Vipin Gupta, “The Status of Chinese Nuclear Weapons Testing,” Jane's Intelligence Review 7 (1), January 1994, pp. 31–35. Vipin Gupta, A Remote Sensing and Photogrammetric Study of the Chinese Nuclear Test Site, PhD thesis (University of London, February 1995), pp. 1–264.
8. Gupta and McNab, “Sleuthing from Home,” pp. 44–47. Smith, “China Planning a Nuclear Test, US Aides Say: Nations Pressure Beijing to Observe Moratorium,” p. Al.
9. For example, high-resolution imagery acquired by the Russian KVR-1000 camera and processed to a 2-meter ground sample distance (GSD) cost US $13 per square kilometer in 1993. Thus, the cost for KVR-1000 imagery of the entire Chinese test site (100, 000 sq. km) would be US $1, 300, 000 assuming no bulk percentage discount was offered. The cost for KVR-1000 imagery of only the active portions of the Chinese test site (200 sq. km) would be substantially less — US $6, 000.
10. Norris, Burrows, and Fieldhouse, Nuclear Weapons Data book Volume V: British, French, and Chinese Nuclear Weapons, pp. 420–422.
11. The Chinese underground test on 5 October 1982 was not reported in the ISC/ NEIS bulletins, although it was detected by a few seismic stations.
12. 1/3where H-actual height of burst Y-nuclear yield
13. The yields for the atmospheric tests were published in Norris, Burrows, and Fieldhouse, Nuclear Weapons Databook Volume V: British, French, and Chinese Nuclear Weapons, pp. 420–422. The yields for the underground tests were published in Gupta, “The Status of Chinese Nuclear Weapons Testing,” p. 32.
14. H. Jeffreys and K. Bullen,” “Seismological Tables,” British Association for the Advancement of Science, Gray-Milne Trust, 1967.
15. B. Bolt, “The Revision of Earthquake Epicenters, Focal Depths, and Origin-Time Using a High Speed Computer,” Geophys. J. Roy. Astron. Soc. 3, 1960, pp. 434–440. B. Bolt, “Earthquake Location for Small Networks Using the Generalized Inverse Matrix,” Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America 60, 1970, pp. 1823–1828.
16. Unfortunately, nuclear tests — particularly low-yield tests — are often not detected under such preferred circumstances. Ola Dahlman and Hans Israelson, Monitoring Underground Nuclear Explosions (Amsterdam: Elsevier Scientific Publishing, 1977), p. 189.
17. Dahlman and Israelson, Monitoring Underground Nuclear Explosions, p. 176.
18. Roger Clark and John Baruch, “Verification of a Comprehensive Test Ban,” in Frank Barnaby, ed., A Handbook on Verification Procedures (London: MacMillan Press, 1990), p. 88.
19. Alan Douglas, “Joint Epicenter Determination,” Nature 215 (5096), July 1, 1967, pp. 47–48.
20. The detonation dates for the four underground nuclear tests were not provided, however. Yan Lu, “Physical Geological Reactions to Underground Nuclear Explosions,” Shuiwendizhi Gongchengdizhi (5), September 1980, pp. 13–16. Jinli Wang and Tiezhong Xu, “A Preliminary Study of Abnormal Movement of Ground Water Influenced by an Underground Nuclear Explosion,” Shuiwendizhi Gongchengdizhi (5), September 1983, pp. 33–36. Yongtai Che, “Response of Ground Water Level in Wells to Underground Explosion,” Shuiwendizhi Gongchengdizhi (4), July 1987, pp. 7–12.
21. All distances were measured in Universal Transverse Mercator grid coordinates.
22. Surface spallation from a vertical shaft test could also increase albedo. However, for vertical shaft tests,.it is not possible to discriminate between surface effects caused by test preparation and the explosion unless an additional image is acquired shortly before detonation.
23. The SPOT-1 scene clearly showed paved roads at the site. Gupta, “The Status of Chinese Nuclear Weapons Testing” p. 34.
24. US Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, The Containment of Underground Nuclear Explosions, OTA-ISC-414 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, October 1989), pp. 11–27.
25. The prevailing winds at Lop Nor flow from the northeast with wind speeds of 65–77 km per hour sweeping through the region an average of 80 days per year. Shu Peng Chen, ed., Atlas of Geoscience Analyses of Landsat Imagery in China (Beijing: Science Press), 1986, p. 178.
26. Fanned configurations have been observed at the US Nevada Test Site. Thomas B. Cochran, William Arkin, Robert S. Norris, and Milton M. Hoenig, Nuclear Weapons Databook Volume II: US Nuclear Warhead Production (Cambridge: Ballinger Publishing, 1987), p. 48.
27. In seismology, distances are expressed as the angle at the center of the Earth that subtends the arc connecting the seismic source to the receiving station.
28. Gupta, “Assessment of the Chinese Nuclear Test Site near Lop Nor,” pp. 379–380.
29. Douglas, Marshall, and Jones, “Body-Wave Magnitudes and Locations of Explosions at the Chinese Test Site, 1967-1989,” pp. 4, 16.
30. Dahlman and Israelson, Monitoring Underground Nuclear Explosions, p. 189.
31. g-based Yield Estimation of Two Chinese Nuclear Tests — 29 September 1988 and 5 October 1993,” 4 November 1993, p. 1). See Table 1 for the list of yields from Chinese underground nuclear tests through 1992.
32. Before the eastern zone was operational, China did conduct one underground nuclear test (22 September 1969) in zone B which reportedly had a yield of 19.2 kilotons (see Table 1).
33. Gupta, “Future Chinese Nuclear Tests on the Horizon,” pp. 2–3. Gupta, “The Status of Chinese Nuclear Weapons Testing,” pp. 31–35.
34. Gupta, “Future Chinese Nuclear Tests on the Horizon,” pp. 2–3. Gupta and McNab, “Sleuthing from Home,” pp. 44–47.
35. For studies of weak seismic events that apply satellite remote sensing and seismology, multimegaton atmospheric tests at low scaled heights of burst can be used as substitutes for underground tests of a few kilotons. The atmospheric tests are preferable because it is easier to detect and identify surface remnants from an atmospheric test in a satellite image. For studies on nuclear test ban verification, it may be worthwhile to investigate old atmospheric explosions that were detected seismically. Satellite imagery can be used to locate the detonation points. Seismic location errors can be measured with respect to the image-derived locations and the seismic capability for pinpointing weak events in the vicinity of old test sites can be assessed remotely.
36. C.H. Thurber, H.R. Quin, and P.G. Richards, “Accurate Locations of Nuclear Explosions in Balapan, Kazakhstan, 1987 to 1989,” Geophysical Research Letters 20 (5), 5 March 1993, p. 401.
37. For remote sensing studies of the US Nevada Test Site, see Bhupendra Jasani, “Civil Observation Satellites and Arms Control Verification,” Preliminary Report, Department of War Studies, King's College London, August 1992, pp. 65–69. Peter Zimmerman, “Study of the Nevada Test Site using Landsat Satellite,” CSIS Report, 1993, pp. 1–9. For remote sensing studies of the former Soviet test sites, see Ulf Ekblad and Hans-Ake Olsson, “Satellite Imagery Detection of Preparations for Underground Nuclear Explosions,” FOA Report C 30560-9.4, Swedish Defense Research Establishment, Linkoping, January 1990, pp. 1–18. William Leith and David Simpson, “Monitoring Underground Nuclear Tests,” in Michael Krepon, Peter Zimmerman, Leonard Spector, and Mary Umberger, Commercial Observation Satellites and International Security (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990), pp. 115–124. Johnny Skorve and John Skogan, “The NUPI Satellite Study of the Northern Underground Nuclear Test Area on Novaya Zemlya,” NUPI Report No. 164, December 1992, pp. 1–51. Lynn Sykes, Jishu Deng, and Paul Lyubomirskiy, “Accurate Location of Nuclear Explosions at Azgir, Kazakhstan, from Satellite Images and Seismic Data: Implications for Monitoring Decoupled Explosions,” Geophysical Research Letters 20 (18), 15 September 1993, pp. 1919–1922. Thurber et al., “Accurate Locations of Nuclear Explosions in Balapan, Kazakhstan, 1987 to 1989,” pp. 399–402. C.H. Thurber, H.R. Quin, and R. Saleh, “Catalog of Locations of Nuclear Explosions at Balapan, Kazakhstan, 1965 to 1985,” submitted to Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 11 August 1993, pp. 1–13.
38. Vipin Gupta and John Hassard, “Space-based Electromagnetic Remote Sensing for Monitoring Nuclear Explosive Testing,” accepted for publication in Surveys in Geophysics.
39. Some of these satellites will also be able to acquire high-resolution images of 15, 000-20, 000 sq km areas in a single flyover. For details on the technical capabilities of the new imaging satellites, see Vipin Gupta, “New Satellite Images for Sale,” to be published in International Security 20 (1), Summer 1995.
40. Warren Heckrotte, “On-site Inspection to Check Compliance,” in Jozef Goldblat and David Cox, Nuclear Weapon Tests: Prohibition or Limitation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 255.
41. Charles Robinove, “Computation with Physical Values from Landsat Digital Data,” Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 48 (5), May 1982, pp. 781–784. Pat Chavez, “An Improved Dark-Object Subtraction Technique for Atmospheric Scattering Correction of Multispectral Data,” Remote Sensing of Environment 24, 1988, pp. 459–479.
42. For a discussion on the merits of temporal band ratioing for change detection, see Gupta, A Remote Sensing and Photogrammetric Study of the Chinese Nuclear 7hst Site, pp. 160–166. For a discussion on the importance of removing atmospheric scattering effects before ratioing, see R. Crippen, “The Dangers of Underestimating the Importance of Data Adjustments in Band Ratioing,” International Journal of Remote Sensing 9 (4), 1988, pp. 767–776.
43. Che, “Response of Ground Water Level in Wells to Underground Explosion,” pp. 7–12.
44. Although the detonation dates were not provided, the two underground nuclear tests must have taken place before July 1987 — the month and year the paper was published.
45. Through his geological analysis of the test site, J. Matzko narrowed down the search to a region that covered approximately two times the ground area covered in the map. Matzko, “Geology of the Chinese Nuclear Test Site near Lop Nor, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China,” pp. 173–181.
46. Matzko, “Geology of the Chinese Nuclear Test Site near Lop Nor, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China,” p. 176.
47. 2e-eccentricity a-semimajor axis b-semiminor axis For an ellipse, 0