Issue 24: September 2015

This issue has been published to coincide with the Ninth Article XIV Conference on 29 September 2015 at UN headquarters in New York, United States.


The Foreign Ministers of Japan and Kazakhstan, Fumio Kishida and Erlan Idrissov will jointly preside over this conference. In this issue, they explain how their countries’ eagerness to see an end to all nuclear testing is rooted in experiencing the horrific effects of nuclear weapons explosions.

Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and member of the Group of Eminent Persons (GEM), argues why the Iran nuclear agreement bodes well for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).

Angela Kane, former UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs and also GEM member, recommends progress on the CTBT’s entry into force as an antidote to the prevalent “disarmament malaise”. 

Reflecting on this summer’s 70th commemoration of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 is an article by Ari Beser, a young journalist whose grandfather was the only U.S. airman to be on board during both attacks.

A little-known aspect of the first series of nuclear tests carried out after the Second World War is explored by physicist and science communicator Michael Bücker, the fate of the captured warships used in the Baker test at the Bikini atoll in 1946.

The effects of a nuclear explosion the size of the Baker test or that of a much more powerful h-bomb developed in the course of subsequent nuclear testing can be visualized for any location on Earth with the “Nukemap”. U.S. nuclear weapons historian Alex Wellerstein explains his motivation for creating this unique online tool.

The Member States’ forum overseeing the build-up of the CTBT’s verification regime that is capable of detecting a nuclear explosion anywhere on Earth is Working Group B (WGB). One of WGB’s longest-serving members, Robert Kemerait, Senior Scientist at the U.S. Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC), looks back upon two successful decades of WGB’s work.

One of the topics discussed by WGB but yet to be exercised is drilling for radioactive samples, the ultimate of the 17 on-site inspection techniques. Walter D. Dekin from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Ward L. Hawkins from Los Alamos National Laboratory explain what it takes to safely conduct this most elaborate and potentially most hazardous of all on-site inspection techniques.

Finally, this issue features Chinese artist Xiaoyu Li and samples from other artists from China, Kazakhstan and the United States inspired by the issue of nuclear testing.