Speaker
Description
The nuclear nature of any explosion occurrence under the CTBT can be determined/established using the detections of any relevant radionuclides at IMS stations. This plays an essential role in the compliance monitoring of the Treaty. During an explosion, Radionuclide materials, specifically radioxenon gases, can be carried in the atmosphere or vented from underground or underwater source. Since radioxenon isotopes can be produced from various sources, there is the need to monitor background activity concentrations in the environment to enable good discrimination of potentially abnormal levels of detections which are of treaty relevance.
Of interest in this study are the radioxenon detections in 2020 at CMX13 noble gas station (in the sub-region) and the possible sources contributing to the observed detections. Analyses of daily samples collected at the station for 2020 showed that 0.6% of the 312 samples measured anomalous radioxenon detection. Xenon-133 was the only abnormal detection of concentrations <1.0 mBq/m³ in January 2020. Backward ATM modelling of the emissions origin indicates that PSR is around industrial Xe emitting facility in South Africa, the only major emitting source in the region around station CMX13 with significant impact on detections depending on meteorological conditions.
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