Minister Pandor to speak at the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation Conference in Vienna
The Minister of Science and Technology, Naledi Pandor, will this weekend travel to Vienna in Austria, where she is expected to participate in and speak at the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO) Conference, as well as associated meetings.
Minister Pandor is scheduled to deliver the keynote address on Monday, 22 June 2015. This will be followed by a meeting and the signing of a Science and Technology Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Prof. Reinhold Mitterlehner, the Austrian Federal Minister of Science, Research and Economy, on behalf of their respective countries.
On Sunday, 21 June 2015, Minister Pandor will visit the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), where she will preside over the signing of a new agreement between IIASA and the South African National Research Foundation.
Minister Pandor will return to South Africa on Tuesday, 23 June 2015.
For more detailed information on the Conference and CTBTO, see the notes below.
Enquiries:
Lunga Ngqengelele
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E-mail: lunga.ngqengelele@dst.gov.za
Background information on the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) is an international agreement that was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 September 1996 and opened for signature on 24 September 1996 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.
The CTBT Organisation outlaws nuclear test explosions and has been tasked with verifying the ban on nuclear tests. It operates a worldwide monitoring system and may conduct on-site inspections. In essence, the CTBT bans nuclear explosions by all sovereign states anywhere in the world. This makes it difficult for countries to develop nuclear bombs for the first time or, for countries that already have them, to assemble even more powerful nuclear bombs. It therefore seeks to prevent the enormous damage caused by radioactive fallout from nuclear explosions to humans, animals and plants.
In addition, the CTBT provides a global verification regime, including the International Monitoring System, a worldwide network of 321 stations that will help to verify compliance with and detect and confirm violations of the CTBT, a communication system, the International Data Centre and on-site inspections.
About the Conference
The CTBT: Science and Technology 2015 Conference will take place from 22 to 26 June 2015 at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria. It will be the fifth in a series of multidisciplinary conferences designed to further enhance the strong relationship between the scientific and technological communities and the CTBTO.
The Conference will provide a forum for scientists from around the world to exchange knowledge and share advances in monitoring and verification technologies of relevance to the CTBT. Such interaction will help ensure that the Treaty's global verification regime remains at the forefront of scientific and technical innovation.
At the last such conference in June 2013, over 750 participants from around 100 countries converged on Vienna. Over the course of five days, more than 80 oral presentations and over 250 poster presentations were delivered on themes related to CTBT verification.
Conference goals:
- To enlarge the scientific community engaged in test-ban monitoring.
- To promote the wider scientific application of data that are used for test-ban certification.
- To enhance the exchange of knowledge and ideas between the CTBTO and the broader scientific community.
The Conference will cover four themes, as follows:
1. The Earth as a complex system
2. Events and their characterisation
3. Advances in sensors, networks and processing
4. Performance optimisation
