Joint Effort Aimed at Showing Verification : U.S. Scientists to Monitor Near Soviet A-Site

A group of American scientists said Monday that they will leave today for Kazakhstan in Central Asia, where they will set up a seismographic monitoring station near a Soviet nuclear test site.

In late May, the Soviet authorities gave unprecedented approval for three such stations. The Americans told reporters Monday that the first will be at Karkaralinsk, about 1,800 miles southeast of Moscow. Karkaralinsk, near the nuclear test site of Semipalatinsk, will be their main base, they said, and they expect to have their equipment set up and working within a few days.

They will work with Soviet scientists, a spokesman said, in an effort to dramatize their belief that verification of nuclear explosions is no longer an obstacle to a comprehensive ban on nuclear testing. A leading Soviet scientist said the project was approved in order to convince skeptics that a test ban could be verified through monitoring devices in the Soviet Union.

Thomas B. Cochran, senior staff scientist of a private environmental organization, the Natural Resources Defense Council, said he does not believe that monitoring stations near the Soviet test site are scientifically essential to detect nuclear blasts.

“Frankly,” he said, “I think the existing network of seismic stations outside the Soviet Union is sufficient . . . to detect low-yield explosions.”

A Pilot Program

But he said the three monitoring sites, to be manned by Soviet and American scientists for a year on a trial basis, will serve as a sort of pilot program to show how a test ban treaty could be enforced.

The U.S. government has taken a neutral stand on the monitoring project and has neither endorsed it nor opposed it, Cochran said. But he said that U.S. officials agreed not to put up any roadblocks and approved in record time an export license to bring some American equipment into the Soviet Union.

Because the Kremlin has declared a unilateral moratorium on nuclear tests until Aug. 6, the instruments will be used until then to monitor other seismic activity, such as earthquakes and even U.S. nuclear tests in Nevada, Cochran said.

If, in the meantime, “they explode a test and don’t tell us, we will pick it up on our instruments,” he said. However, the Soviet government has not yet decided whether to allow the Americans to monitor any nuclear tests that it may decide to conduct after the moratorium expires.

The reason no decision has been forthcoming, Cochran said, may be that the Soviets do not want American scientists to make precise measurements of Soviet nuclear blasts.

Ultimate Object

He said he thinks the question “will be resolved in favor of keeping the instruments running, and the whole issue will blow away. . . . But the success of our mission does not depend on our monitoring Soviet tests. . . . The ultimate objective is to have no tests.”

The agreement between the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Soviet Academy of Sciences also provides for Soviet scientists to travel to Nevada to monitor U.S. nuclear tests there.

But Vladimir Keilis-Borok, a spokesman for the Soviet Academy, said it is not likely that any Soviet scientists will make such a trip. He said his government does not want to take part in any way in condoning a continuing nuclear buildup.

Keilis-Borok said that approval for the unofficial U.S. monitoring effort was without precedent. He said it is the first time that any foreigners have been given permission to get within 100 kilometers (62 miles) of the Soviet nuclear test site.

“I consider this a major breakthrough,” he said. “It could be a big boost for research.”

More precise measurements of seismic waves, he said, might help to forecast earthquakes.

Monitor Earthquakes

One of the Americans, James Brune, a professor of geophysics at University of California, San Diego, echoed this view. He said the project “will allow us to monitor earthquakes occurring all over the world and give us more understanding about the nature of seismic waves.”

The American team consists of nine scientists, including Jonathan Berger, Brian Tucker, Paul Bodin and Dave Canel, all from UC San Diego, and Keith Priestley of the University of Nevada. Six of them will stay on for two months, through the first phase of the project.

Cochran said the National Defense Resources Council has received grants from foundations as well as gifts from more than 100 individuals to finance its share of the total cost, which will be split with the Soviet Union.

At first, he said, equipment will be loaned by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at La Jolla, but the Soviet Union hopes to buy equipment from U.S. manufacturers.