Year: 2025
Type: report
Abstract: On 18 October 2023 a 16.3-ton TNT equivalent chemical explosion was detonated underground at the Nevada National Security Site, generating a seismic event with a magnitude of 1.7 (Meyers et al., 2024). The associated seismic wavefield was measured on a Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) array with slant range distances from 27 m – 1123 m. The first arriving phase traveled at an apparent velocity of about 2640 m s-1 from 27 m to 420 m slant range and about 2470 m s-1 from 505 m to 1123 m slant range according to the first arrival moveouts on the DAS data. The first arrival from the explosion temporarily saturated the cable from a slant range of 27 m – 186 m and 0.009 s to 0.084 s post detonation. From 186 m slant range to 420 m slant range, peak strain rates of 5.6 x 106 nm m-1 s-1 were observed for the first arrival phase. For the first arrival from 505 m slant range to 1123 m slant range, peak strain rates reduced to 8.0 x 104 nm m-1 s-1. A comparison of the scaled accelerations computed from DAS, the geophone pairs, and the measurements of co-located accelerometer pairs show common agreement at the scaled ranges of the single point sensors. This study adds to the body of work reporting near-source DAS observations of the seismic wavefields generated by underground chemical explosions. These results indicate that near-source DAS observations can refine interpretations of phase identification from single-point sensor observations. Phase identification could be one mechanism that contributes scatter to single point seismic measurements which would confound the performance of empirical relationships for small explosions. Removing that mechanism may therefore reduce interstation variability and increase empirical relationship performance for small explosions.
DOI: 10.2172/3001502
Authors: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, Kirsten Chojnicki, PE1 Experiment Team, James St. Clair, Dale Sprinkle, Joshua Feldman, Alvaro Cruz-Cabrera, George Abbott, Thomas Alexander, Ethan Alger, Adan Alvarez-Huitron, Tarabay Antoun, Auld Graham, Hector Banuelos, Marcus Barela, Tyler barnhart, Perry Barrow, Tara Bartlett, Arturo Bockman, Miles Bodmer, Kyren Bogolub, Jesse Bonner, Rose Borden, Hakim Boukhalfa, Benjamin Broman, Scott Broome, Brian Brown, Jeffrey Burghardt, Daniel Chester, Charles Choens, Al Churby, Justin Cole, Thomas Coleman, Jon Collard, Alexander Couture, Glenn Crosby, Damien D'Saint Angelo, Dea Musa, Dekin Walter, Beirl DeVisser, Matthew Dietel, Christine Downs, Nicholas Downs, Beth Dzenitis, Eric Eckert, Stephanie Eras, Garrett Euler, Souheil Ezzedine, Jose Falliner, James Fast, Kristine Featherston, Michael Foxe, Clayton Freimuth, Brad Fritz, Sergio Gamboa, Lisa Garner, Thomas Gascoigne, Jason Gastelum, Jessie Gaylord, David Gessey, Brian Glasgow, Graham Galvin, Andrew Glomski, Matthew Goodwin, David Green, James Griego, Scott Grover, Jose Madrid Gutierrez, Derek Haas, Roger Hall, Allyson Hall, Daniel Hardy, Dylan Haulk, Jason Heath, James Holdcroft, Austin Holland, Will Honjas, Kaleb Howard, Clayton Hudson, Mathew Ingraham, Johnny Jaramillo, Ayrton Jenkins, Christine Johnson, Kyle Jones, William Junor, Martin Keillor, graham Kent, Michael Keogh, William Kibikas, Kieran Leadbeater, Hunter Knox, James Knox, Kristopher Kuhlman, Chris Kwiatkowski, Pierre-Yves La Bas, Kenneth Laintz, Joesph Lapka, Jennifer Larotonda, John Layne, Nick Ledoux, Shengtai Li, Dorothy Linneman, Paul Lipkowitz, Gordon Macleod, Amrit Malach, Erin Zionce, Ryan McCombe, Collin Meierbachtol, Robert Mellors, Brian Memmott, Wade Mendenhall, Jennifer Mendez, Xavier Miller, Andrew Miller, Francisco Miranda, Manny Montano, Michael Moore, Joe Morris, William Munley, Edgar Godoy Murillo, Stephen Myers, Taylor Myers, Annabelle Navarro, Stuart Nippress, Shawn Otto, Sheila Peacock, Steve Pemberton, Rose Perea, Jacob Peterson, Gabe Plank, David Podrasky, Agatha Podrasky, Joseph Pope, Mike Poskey, Matthew Powell, Amanda Price, Andrew Puyleart, Bobby Quintana, Thom Rahn, Carlos Rendon, Justin Reppart, Hernan Rico, Barry Roberts, Richard Robey, Rebecca Rodd, Mark Rodriguez, Aaron Rogall, Alex Romanczuk, Melissa Roth, George Salyer, Bill Savran, Walt Schalk, Carolyn Seifert, Dan Seitz, Zuan-Min Shao, Dana Sirota, Johnathan Slack, Dave Slater, Devon Smith, Ken Smith, Brady Spears, Philip Stauffer, Richard Stead, Mary Sgtephens, Christopher Strickland, Alex Tafoya, Joshua Tafoya, M'balia Tagoe, Chad Taguba, Liane Tarnecki, Rees Tatge, Stephanie Teich-Mcgoldrick, Ben Terry, Ryan Thompson, Margaret Townsend, Greg Tubbs, Reagan Turley, Nichole Valdez, Aaron Van Morris, Sergio Vergara, Steve Vigil, Javier Villanueva, Oleg Vorobiev, Darrin Wallace, Tim Walrath, Sonia Wharton, Robert White, Helen White, Aliya Whitehill, Marc Williams, Jennifer Wilson, Lynn Wood, Andrew Wright, Cliff Wright, Guangping Xu, Xianjin Yang, Ray Yost, Cleat Zeiler
Institutions: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Nevada National Security Site, AWE Nuclear Security Technologies, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories California, University of Nevada, Reno, Desert Research Institute, Sandia National Laboratories, The University of Texas at Austin, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Language: English
Topic: Seismic Waves and Analysis
Subfield: Geophysics
Field: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4416149484