Nuclear test ban

Abstract

In 1963, the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT), as the first agreement banning nuclear testing, was reached. It is so called because it excludes underground testing from the scope of prohibition. Since then, creating a comprehensive test ban treaty has been a consistent demand of the international community. It was the then prospective Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty's (NPT) Review and Extension Conference that accelerated the comprehensive test ban negotiations at the Conference on Disarmament, which finalized the text of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996. Although it is called "comprehensive," the CTBT's scope of prohibition is limited to "any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion" and does not cover non-explosive tests. Moreover, it is still to enter into force 25 years after signature. As the very latest nuclear arms control and disarmament agreement, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) was adopted in 2017. It prohibits a nuclear weapon "test," a term suggesting a more comprehensive ban on nuclear testing than the CTBT. This chapter describes the history of the efforts to prohibit nuclear testing by examining these and other relevant treaties as well as judicial decisions on the same subject at the International Court of Justice