Dorval monitors the nuclear test of North Korea

Photo Chantal Poirier
The meteorologist Sébastien Chouinard and the section chief of the emergency department at CMC, Yves Pelletier, to work a card.

Gilles Brien and
Vincent Larin

Sunday, 23 July, 2017 08:00

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Sunday, 23 July, 2017 08:00

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The underground nuclear tests of North Korea are highly monitored by a team of scientists based in Dorval, which is working day and night to detect the slightest particle of radioactive, even thousands of miles away.

These tests concern in the team of Yves Pelletier, chief of the Section of response to environmental emergencies, Environment Canada. Over the past twenty years, the scientists at the canadian meteorological Centre (CMC) to detect and follow any hazardous material into the atmosphere – volcanic ash, forest fires or plumes of toxic fumes – a bit everywhere in the world.

But Canada is also one of the eight meteorological centres specialized in nuclear emergencies of the world meteorological Organization.

The size of the planet

In fact, the CMC in Dorval monitors any nuclear explosion in the world from a network of stations spread all over the planet. The black beast tracked by meteorologists and sensors: radionuclides, particles of dust with a radioactive signature that is not lying. These radionuclides can be used to identify nuclear explosions, but also to know their source of emission.

“To detect a nuclear explosion,” explains Yves Pelletier, chief of the Section, the monitoring network uses four approaches. Of séismographes, underwater microphones, a monitoring system of infrasound and radionuclides detected in the air. Even if the explosion is underground, there may be fumes in the atmosphere.”

Photo Chantal Poirier

Victor Thomas, meteorologist with the CMC, analysis of the data.

Step back in time

To determine the source of the particles, the team of the MCC performs the inverse modelling. We run the models weather backward in time. This allows to monitor the flow of winds in the hours and days preceding. It is thus precisely determine the local source.

In a few minutes, any explosion can be detected and localized. A few hours after, the settings are already analyzed.

A computer program that is very powerful, then does the calculations and confirms that the explosion is of human origin, his power, his strength, etc, All the data are eventually transmitted to the headquarters of the Organization, in Vienna.

The team of emergency measures of the CMC is part of a larger collection of laboratories, data centers, and government organizations devoted to public safety.

– With the collaboration of Vincent Larin

An international treaty is not in force

Photo courtesy

Simulation of the dispersion of radioactive particles after the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant, Japan, in march 2011.

Canada is part of the Organization of the Treaty of complete prohibition of nuclear tests and contributes to the global monitoring as a policy of the atmosphere. Dorval is one of eight centers of detection loaded by the UN to determine the origin of any atomic explosion. Except as the Treaty of complete prohibition of nuclear tests (CTBT) is an international agreement that, if it exists since 1996, has never been in force officially. This treaty prohibits any nuclear explosions for peaceful purposes or military, in any environment.

Global monitoring

To ensure that member States comply with the provisions of the treaty, it establishes a global monitoring system to detect any nuclear explosion in the air, in the soil or in the water of the planet. The treaty has been signed by 180 countries and ratified by 85 %, but has never been adopted by the united nations.

Five countries to block the entry into force of this agreement by refusing to ratify it. These countries are the United States, China, Egypt, Israel and Iran. North Korea, meanwhile, has never signed the agreement. Its five nuclear tests since 2006, the last of which was held on January 6, 2016, have sparked protests around the world.

They also take the volcanoes to the eye

Photo Chantal Poirier

Jean-Philippe Gauthier, programmer, scientist, prepares models weather.

The meteorologists at the canadian meteorological Centre (CMC) monitors all the nuclear events that other meteorological phenomena likely to disturb human activities.

The volcanic ash that reject periodically volcanoes can completely cause the stop of the engines of a plane. Therefore, it becomes extremely important to plan for how they disperse in the atmosphere. During the eruption of the volcano mount Pavlof, Alaska (lower graph), in march 2016, areas complete had been closed to air traffic in Canada. When the mount Puyehue-Cordón Caulle, in Chile, has rejected a huge ash cloud in June 2011, he made three times the tour of the planet. For the track, the Centre volcanic ash advisory in Montreal was assisted in four other countries. The CMC has created a simulation of the movement of radioactive particles at the nuclear power plant accident in Fukushima, Japan, in march 2011. The meteorologists of the CMC were able to predict when exactly these particles arrive in North America.

Photo courtesy

Simulation of the dispersion of volcanic ash emitted by mount Pavlof, Alaska, in march 2016.

A network of sensing the world

Thanks to a global network of 80 stations, the canadian meteorological Centre can follow in real time the path of the nuclear particles released – sometimes days earlier – in the atmosphere.

Some of these stations are located in places that are very isolated to allow scientists to keep an eye on the planet as a whole. This is the case of the Kerguelen islands, located in the middle of the Indian ocean.

Specific tools

These stations are used to evacuate the ambient air on a 24-hour period and thus can detect the presence of radionuclides, these particles that are released into the air during an atomic explosion.

“Even in the case of nuclear explosions under the earth, as is often the case with North Korea, we can detect the radionuclides of days later,” explains the meteorologist of the MCC Alain Malo. These tools are extremely accurate.”

Provide

By analyzing the concentrations of radionuclides at each of these stations, scientists from the Organization of the Treaty of complete prohibition of nuclear tests can recreate the trajectory of the nuclear incidents.

In the case of the explosion of the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan, in march 2011, they have been able to predict the trajectory of the plume of nuclear particles in order to determine that it did not constitute a danger to the health of the population.

The concentrations of radioactive particles were then from 1000 to 10 000 times less strong than those measured in Europe following the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986.