scholarly journals Recovery and Calibration of Legacy Underground Nuclear Test Seismic Data from the Leo Brady Seismic Network

2020 ◽  
Vol 91 (3) ◽  
pp. 1488-1499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian A. Young ◽  
Robert E. Abbott
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Seismic Data ◽  
Test Site ◽  
The United States ◽  
Seismic Network ◽  
Nevada Test Site ◽  
Data Format ◽  
Weight Lift ◽  
Poles And Zeros ◽  
Full Waveforms

Abstract The Leo Brady Seismic Network (LBSN, originally the Sandia Seismic Network) was established in 1960 by Sandia National Laboratories to monitor underground nuclear tests (UGTs) at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS, formerly named the Nevada Test Site). The LBSN has been in various configurations throughout its existence, but it has generally been comprised of four to six stations at regional distances (∼150–400  km) from the NNSS with approximately evenly spaced azimuthal coverage. Between 1962 and the end of nuclear testing in 1992, the LBSN—and a sister network operated by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories—was the most comprehensive United States source of regional seismic data of UGTs. Approximately 75% of all UGTs performed by the United States occurred in the predigital era. At that time, LBSN data were transmitted as frequency-modulated (FM) audio over telephone lines to a central location and recorded as analog waveforms on high-fidelity magnetic audio tapes. These tapes have been in dry temperature-stable storage for decades and contain the sole record of this irreplaceable data; full waveforms of LBSN-recorded UGTs from this era were not routinely digitized or otherwise published. We have developed a process to recover and calibrate data from these tapes. First, we play back and digitize the tapes as audio. Next, we demodulate the FM “audio” into individual waveforms. We then estimate the various instrument constants through careful measurement of “weight-lift” tests performed prior to each UGT on each instrument. Finally, these coefficients allow us to scale and shape the derived instrument response of the seismographs and compute poles and zeros. The result of this process is a digital record of the recorded seismic ground motion in a modern data format, stored in a searchable database. To date, we have digitized tapes from 592 UGTs.

Long-Term Stewardship and Risk Management Strategies for Inactive Nuclear Test Sites in the United States

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. S. Shafer ◽  
J. B. Chapman ◽  
A. E. Hassan ◽  
G. Pohll ◽  
K. F. Pohlmann ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Risk Management ◽  
Test Site ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear Test ◽  
Test Area ◽  
Nevada Test Site ◽  
Flow And Transport ◽  
Nuclear Tests

Characterizing and managing groundwater contamination associated with the 828 underground nuclear tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site are among the most challenging environmental remediation issues faced by the U.S. Department of Energy. Although significant long-term stewardship and risk management issues are associated with underground nuclear tests on the Nevada Test Site, of possible equal concern are a smaller number of underground nuclear tests conducted by the United States, 12 total, at eight sites located off the Nevada Test Site. In comparison to the Nevada Test Site, the U.S. Department of Energy has minimal institutional controls at these “offsite test areas” (Offsites) to serve as risk barriers. The corrective action and closure strategy under development for the Central Nevada Test Area and proposed recommendations [1] concerning long-term stewardship for this and the other Offsites illustrate long-term stewardship and risk management strategies applicable to underground nuclear test areas in the United States. The groundwater flow and transport model for the Central Nevada Test Area, site of the 1968 Faultless underground nuclear test, is the first model accepted by a U.S. state regulator (the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection) for an underground nuclear test area. Recommendations for the Central Nevada Test Area and other Offsites include developing decision support models to evaluate the impacts of future changes of land and water uses on previous decisions involving groundwater-use restrictions. Particularly for the Offsites in arid states such as Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado, it is difficult to envision all future demands on subsurface resources. Rather than trying to maintain complex flow and transport models to evaluate future resource-use scenarios, decision support models coupled with original contaminant flow and transport models could be used as scoping tools to evaluate the sensitivity of previously established resource-use boundaries. This evaluation will determine if the previously established boundaries are still adequate for proposed new land and resource uses or if additional data collection or modeling will be necessary to make technically sound decisions. In addition, previously developed Data Decision Analyses, used to quantitatively evaluate the costs and benefits of different data collection activities conducted during the site characterization phase, could be maintained as a long-term stewardship tool to identify new data collection efforts, if necessary as indicated by a decision support model.

scholarly journals In the Shadow of the Mushroom Cloud: Nuclear Testing, Radioactive Fallout, and Damage to U.S. Agriculture, 1945 to 1970

2019 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 244-274
Author(s):  
Keith Meyers
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Test Site ◽  
The United States ◽  
Radioactive Fallout ◽  
Economic Effects ◽  
Radioactive Material ◽  
Nevada Test Site ◽  
Nuclear Testing ◽  
Nuclear Tests

In the 1950s the United States conducted scores of atmospheric nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site. This article studies the effects of radioactive fallout from nuclear tests on agriculture in regions hundreds of miles from the NTS. While research has shown that this radioactive material posed a health risk near the NTS, little is known about the direct economic effects nuclear testing may have had. I find that fallout from nuclear tests adversely affected U.S. agricultural production, and this result suggests that nuclear testing had a much broader economic and environmental impact than previously thought.

Travel times and amplitudes of principal body phases recorded from gnome

1962 ◽  
Vol 52 (5) ◽  
pp. 1057-1074 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Romney ◽  
Billy G. Brooks ◽  
Robert H. Mansfield ◽  
Dean S. Carder ◽  
James N. Jordan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Seismic Waves ◽  
Test Site ◽  
The United States ◽  
Body Waves ◽  
Travel Times ◽  
Eastern United States ◽  
Nevada Test Site ◽  
Short Period ◽  
The Difference

abstract gnome, an undergound nuclear explosion in salt near Carlsbad, New Mexico, produced seismic waves which were recorded widely throughout the United States and at a few foreign stations. The travel times of P were strongly dependent on the path of propagation, and were as much as 12 seconds earlier in the eastern United States than at equivalent distances in the western part of the United States. At the few stations more distant than 25°, P was about 2 seconds earlier than predicted by the Jeffreys-Bullen table for surface focus. Amplitudes of Pn were similarly dependent upon the path of propagation; although the measurements showed great scatter, amplitudes to the east were generally larger than those to the west. Pn travel time and amplitude anomalies suggest a systematic relationship to crustal thickness. There is evidence from the difference in the speeds and attenuation rates that Lg and P are not transmitted along analogous paths through the crust. Short period body waves were two or three times larger than expected from an explosion of the same energy in tuff at the Nevada Test Site. Surface waves, however, were relatively weak compared with explosions of similar yield in tuff.

Ecofeminist ‘lines of convergence’: Remapping the American West in Rebecca Solnit’s Savage Dreams

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daisy Henwood
Keyword(s):  
National Park ◽  
American West ◽  
Test Site ◽  
The United States ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Nevada Test Site ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
The Face ◽  
Resistance To Power ◽  
The Military

This article examines the ways Rebecca Solnit’s Savage Dreams (1994) (re)maps two key locations in the American West. The text centres on Yosemite National Park and the Nevada Test Site, locations emblematic of histories of colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism and the military in the United States. Considering how Solnit constructs a counter-map of these places, this article argues that by tracing ‘lines of convergence’ on a landscape deemed empty by the dominant culture, Solnit both documents and is part of resistance to power structures upheld by traditional cartography. Using an ecofeminist framework based on drawing connections in the face of the dominant culture’s emphasis on fragmentation and separation, I discuss how Solnit exposes the silence and violence of the map. I then consider the ways she constructs a ‘testimonial network’ that counters both. Finally, I suggest that Solnit’s textual counter-map prompts us to re-read the traditional map on connective, ecofeminist terms.

scholarly journals HISTORICAL SEISMIC STATIONS IN USSR AND REGISTRATION UNDERGROUND NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS

2021 ◽  
pp. 47-52
Author(s):  
K. S. Nepeina ◽  
V. A. An
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Test Site ◽  
The United States ◽  
Time Service ◽  
Seismic Stations ◽  
Underground Nuclear Explosions ◽  
Nuclear Explosions ◽  
Russian Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

During the Cold War of the 20th century and the classification of information between the largest nuclear states the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States of America (USA), data on the registration of nuclear explosions were not published in the reports of the Unitied Seismic Observation Service. However, underground nuclear explosions were recorded. For example, underground nuclear explosions, produced by the United States on Amchitka island, were recorded by more than 30 stations of the USSR at epicentral distances Δ ~ 8–160°. Tests at the Nevada Test Site were found especially well throughout the USSR seismic stations. As a result of processing the bulletins of registered events, checking the values with the time service, the registration parameters for the Soviet stations were destroyed. However, thanks to an employee of the laboratory 5-s of the Institute of Physics of the Earth named after O.Yu. Schmidt of the USSR Academy of Sciences Kh.D. Rubinstein is kept at the Institute for the Dynamics of Geospheres of the Russian Academy of Sciences named after Academician M.A. Sadovsky. Only after 1985 messages from some seismic stations of the former USSR began to be published in the operational reports of the Geophysical Service of the Russian Academy of Sciences. This material is intended to publish that layer of invaluable information on the registration of underground nuclear explosions, made by the United States, which has been so carefully created for decades, and has not been published anywhere at the moment.

Amchitka Island, Alaska: moving towards long term stewardship

Polar Record ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Benning ◽  
David L. Barnes ◽  
Joanna Burger ◽  
John J. Kelley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Atomic Energy Commission ◽  
Test Site ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear Test ◽  
Department Of Energy ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Ecological Health ◽  
History Of

ABSTRACTAmchitka Island, Alaska, is a historical underground nuclear test site. Three underground tests were conducted there by the United States Atomic Energy Commission, now US Department of Energy (USDOE), between 1965 and 1971. These were Long Shot, an 80 kiloton detonation; Milrow, a 1 megaton detonation; and Cannikin, a 5 megaton detonation. Subsequent to these tests, several scientific assessments have been conducted regarding the impacts of the tests on the terrestrial and marine environments surrounding the island. However, many citizens and groups still voice concerns over the potential for detrimental effects on human and ecological health. In its responsibility for the long term protection of human and ecological health consequent to its nuclear programme, USDOE has recently prepared a plan for the long term surveillance and monitoring of the site. The purpose of this paper is to summarise the history of the island, specifically with regards to its use as a nuclear test site, to summarise the results of investigative activities following testing, to summarise USDOE's plan for surveillance and monitoring, and to offer the authors' viewpoints on the long term stewardship of the island. The authors deemed the stewardship plan to be essentially protective of human and ecological health; however, they recommend a stronger commitment to site oversight and review, as well as to future research, for addressing uncertainties remaining at the island.

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