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VIENNA / NUCLEAR TEST I
STORY: VIENNA / DPRK NUCLEAR TEST I
TRT: 2.15
SOURCE: CTBTO
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 12 FEBRUARY 2013, VIENNA, AUSTRIA / FILE
12 FEBRUARY 2013, VIENNA, AUSTRIA
1. Pan right, exterior of CTBTO Headquarters in Vienna
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Tibor Tóth, Executive Secretary, CTBTO:
“Early in the morning today, the international monitoring system of the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization detected a suspicious event on the territory of North Korea. To put it in a context, historically there are very few seismic events on the territory of the DPRK. Number two, the event location is congruent with those locations which were the 2006 and the 2009 nuclear test explosions. This suspicious event is of magnitude 4.9.”
FILE - APRIL 2012, SEISMIC STATION, YELLOW KNIFE, CANADA
3. Wide shot, seismometers inside a seismic monitoring station
4. Med shot, engineer inside a seismic monitoring station with seismometers
12 FEBRUARY 2013, VIENNA, AUSTRIA
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Tibor Tóth, Executive Secretary, CTBTO:
“The important element is that the member states of the Test-Ban Treaty and the organization are observing a silence of nuclear explosions. There is a no test environment for this millennium with the exception of one country, the DPRK.”
FILE – 12 DECEMBER 2012, CTBTO HEADQUARTERS, VIENNA, AUSTRIA
6. Close up, monitor with world map showing monitoring stations
7. Wide shot, different monitors showing monitoring stations
8. Close up, screen showing a map with stations in Asia, zooms into the Korean peninsular
9. Close up, screen showing a map of the area of North Korea
10. Wide shot, CTBTO high volume air sampler on the roof of the UN Headquarters in Vienna
12 FEBRUARY 2013, VIENNA, AUSTRIA
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Tibor Tóth, Executive Secretary, CTBTO:
“This DPRK-announced nuclear explosion is going in the wrong direction, this is a wrong step in the wrong direction and this is a challenge to this norm observed by the international community of not carrying out nuclear weapon explosions.”
FILE - 13 APRIL 2012, RADIONUCLIDE STATION AT YELLOWKNIFE, CANADA
(The 2006 North Korean nuclear test was detected by the CTBTO’s Yellowknife noble gas station. It registered a higher concentration of Xenon 133, two weeks after the test)
12. Various shots, sign of the Geophysical Observatory
13. Close up, technician taking notes
FILE - JUNE 2010, INFRASOUND TEST BED AT TAFELBERG, AUSTRIA
14. Wide shot, infrasound test bed
FILE – MAY 2012, INFRASOUND STATION, QAANAAQ, GREENLAND
15. Med shot, technician working on an infrasound station
FILE – MAY 2010, SEISMIC STATION AT FREYUNG, BAVARIAN FOREST, GERMANY
16. Wide shot, technician going inside the vault of a seismic monitoring station
17. Med shot, technician descending into the seismic monitoring station
Early this morning (12 February), monitoring stations of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) detected a seismic event with explosion-like characteristics in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
The CTBTO’s first and preliminary automatic detections were made by up to 25 seismic stations around the world. The first data were made available to CTBTO Member States in little more than one hour, and before the DPRK’s announcement.
To put it in a context, Tibor Tóth the CTBTO Executive Secretary said in an interview that historically there were very few seismic events on the territory of the DPRK, and that the event location was congruent with those locations which were the 2006 and the 2009 nuclear test explosions. He added, “This suspicious event is of magnitude 4.9”.
According to the CTBTO the event measured 5.0 in magnitude, which is around twice as large as the DPRK’s nuclear test in 2009 (4.52) and much larger than the one in 2006 (4.1).
Toth said that the important element was that the member states of the Test-Ban Treaty and the organization were observing a silence of nuclear explosions. Toth added that “There is a no test environment for this millennium with the exception of one country, the DPRK”.
As data from further stations is analyzed, both automatically and by analysts, more precise information on the event’s location, time, depth and magnitude will become available.
The Head of the CTBTO stressed that “this is a wrong step in the wrong direction and this is a challenge to this norm observed by the international community of not carrying out nuclear weapon explosions.”
The CTBTO is the international organization responsible for ensuring that no nuclear explosion goes undetected. Its verification technologies include seismic sensors that record shockwaves in the ground caused by underground nuclear explosions. The 2006 DPRK nuclear test was detected by 22 seismic stations, the 2009 test by 61.
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