nuclear fallout

Stations to monitor nuclear fallout

FEARS that the South Pacific might be used for illegal nuclear testing have led to the establish ment of a region wide scientific system to monitor for fallout. Using United Nations money New Zealand is to set up three monitoring systems while Australia will establish two.

New Zealand said last month their three stations would be in Kaitaia at the top end of the country, at the Chatham Islands east of New Zealand and in Rarotonga, Cook Islands.

Deputy New Zealand Prime Minister Wyatt Creech said the state of the art radio nuclide monitoring stations, which will be running by November, were key in policing the South Pacific for signs of illegal nuclear weapons.

Radionuclides are small radioactive par ticles present in the atmosphere after a

nuclear test. Mr Creech said New Zealand had signed a contract with the United Nations to run the monitoring stations as part of a South Pacific network monitoring compliance with the test ban treaty.

Two other stations would be located in Australia and they would all be linked eventually to a world-wide network of 80 radionuclide monitoring facilities.

The Chathams would also eventually house an infrasound station to detect very long wavelength sound waves detectable over considerable distances, and a Noble Gas monitoring facility looking for artifi cially created changes in such gases.

New Zealand will own the stations but costs will be largely met by the United Nations through its Provisional Technical

Secretariat. The stations will operate 24 hours a day, taking air samples every 10 minutes and relaying the results every two hours by satellite to an international data centre in Vienna. "Monitoring in the southern hemisphere is particularly impor tant because the South Pacific and Southern Oceans provide a large area where nuclear testing in breach of the treaty could be car ried out," Mr Creech said.

The New Zealand and Australian sta tions will be the first stations in the world to come on line. Extra monitoring in the Chathams will be operational within three years.

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty has 150 signatories and has been rat ified by 21 countries.

It bans all nuclear testing and places an

obligation on signatories to prohibit and

prevent nuclear explosions at any place under their jurisdiction or control. ■