Seismic verification of nuclear test ban treaties

Seismic monitoring as discussed in this paper is evaluated without specific references to the particular treaty regime to which it is to apply. There will always be some limit to the capability of any given monitoring network, and hence there will always be a threshold below which a seismic network could not monitor with high confidence. Consequently, should a total test ban be enacted there will be a very low threshold below which seismic methods cannot provide high confidence monitoring. Such a treaty could still be considered to be in the national interest if, taking both seismic and nonseismic verification methods into account, the significance of undetected violations (if they were to occur) would be outweighed by the benefits of such a treaty