On Tuesday, Dr. Zerbo visited the George Washington University before speaking at the Nuclear Explosion Monitoring: 60 Years of Science and Innovation event on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

I was able to attend the last part of Dr. Zerbo’s Tuesday visit, but thankfully, the entirety of Wednesday’s visit. On Wednesday, there was a grand exhibit room at the Senate’s Dirksen Building that hosted the event. I attended the event with Youth Group members Sarah Eustace and Farnaz Alimehri from the Washington, DC area. Before the speakers commenced, we were allowed to roam the exhibit, which featured booths about the progress the world has made in the development of a nuclear explosion monitoring system. These booths were hosted by U.S. laboratories and the CTBTO. We were able to learn about the equipment used for monitoring and the different uses for this equipment outside of explosion monitoring.

The first speaker was the U.S. Secretary of Energy, Ernest Moniz. He talked about the history of the CTBTO and that he was in support of it when it was first signed, but not ratified, in 1999, but agreed that more research on monitoring was needed. Moniz supports the reexamination of the treaty as he says the technology is now sufficient.

Second was Senator Tom Udall from New Mexico, the state home to the Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories, known for nuclear detection. He urges President-Elect Trump to speak with experts about how the Iran deal and how it has improved international security.

Third was Senator Ed Markey from Massachusetts, who proclaimed that the US must ratify the CTBT and soon. He also claimed that we know more about nuclear testing now without having tested weapons since the cold war than if we had continued testing.

After the three speakers, a panel of notable monitoring professionals discussed their work and the progress they’ve made in the field. The panel included David Merker (Director of the Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC)), W. Randy Bell (Director of the International Data Centre Division, CTBTO PrepCom), Dr. Steven Ashby (Direct of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)) and Al-Sharif Nasser bin Nasser (Managing Director of Middle East Scientific Institute for Security (MESIS)). David Merker expressed concern over the 20-year-old AFTAC system and its need for modernization. Randy Bell, who runs the monitoring system from Vienna, said, “The system is capable. The system is ready”, urging the US policy makers in the crowd to support ratification of the treaty and convert the international moratorium on nuclear testing to law. He also stressed the importance of the volatility of use of the monitoring system and how it can be used to advance science in a variety of ways.

Following the panel, Dr. Zerbo and Thomas Countryman, the US Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security, discussed the CTBTO and how far we’ve come in nuclear explosion monitoring.

Overall, we were able to learn a lot more about the US science and monitoring community’s view on the CTBT and this has helped jump-start dialogue within the CTBTO Youth Group in DC.