U.S. undersecretary to talk on nuclear test ban
October 14, 2015
Undersecretary of State Rose Gottemoeller will lecture at the University of Alaska
Fairbanks on Monday, Oct. 19, and visit a campus center that monitors for nuclear
explosions worldwide.
Gottenmoeller heads the U.S. State Department’s arms control and international security
effort and advises the secretary of state on arms control, nonproliferation and disarmament.
She leads the U.S. diplomatic effort for the entry into force of the Comprehensive
Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.
Gottemoeller will present a lecture entitled “The End of Nuclear Testing?” at 7 p.m.
at the Murie Building auditorium. She will discuss why the CTBT is important to U.S.
national security and how it would, if ratified, reduce the nuclear threat worldwide.
The 20-minute talk, after which Gottemoeller will take questions, is free and open
to the public.
A group of faculty, staff and students at UAF’s Geophysical Institute has assisted with
the construction and operation of the CTBT’s International Monitoring System since
the late 1990s.
The IMS is a worldwide network of monitoring technologies used to verify the treaty
by detecting the telltale signatures of a nuclear test. The Wilson Alaska Technical
Center within the Geophysical Institute manages the operation and maintenance of more
than 20 U.S. IMS stations worldwide for the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
These sites span the globe from the South Pole in Antarctica to Fairbanks, Alaska.
Gottemoeller will visit the IMS infrasound station on the Fairbanks campus and meet
with the personnel responsible for its operation.
WATC has two types of IMS stations. Infrasound stations, such as the one on campus,
are sensitive to the low-frequency sound waves associated with an atmospheric test,
and seismic stations are sensitive to the characteristic waves from a surface or subsurface
test. Data from the stations are also used in scientific applications, including atmospheric
physics, small-scale explosions, seismology and volcanology.
ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Sue Mitchell, Geophysical Institute public information manager, 907-474-5823, sue.mitchell@alaska.edu; Curt Szuberla, Wilson Alaska Technical Center, 907-474-7347 or caszuberla@alaska.edu; or David Fee, WATC, 907-474-7564 or dfee1@alaska.edu
ON THE WEB: Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security, http://www.state.gov/t/#
Wilson Alaska Technical Center: http://www.gi.alaska.edu/facilities/wilson-alaska-technical-center