AWE Blacknest

AWE Blacknest is part of the Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston, which is operated by AWE Management Ltd under a contract from the Ministry of Defence.

Formerly part of the Ministry of Defence, AWE Blacknest has, for over 50 years, been researching techniques to distinguish the seismic signals generated by underground nuclear explosions from those generated by earthquakes.

Such techniques are a cornerstone of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty which is currently being ratified by United Nations member states.

This website provides information about AWE Blacknest, and information and links about Forensic Seismology, the science of Test Ban monitoring.

What We Do

Blacknest's main function is to develop and maintain expertise in using seismic techniques to detect and identify underground explosions. This expertise and the techniques have been used in the past to provide assessments for the UK Government on nuclear explosions carried out by other countries. The expertise is to be used as part of Britain's contribution to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty which is currently being ratified by United Nations member states.

National Data Centre

AWE Blacknest hosts the National Data Centre for the United Kingdom as defined in the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.

Data from a number of stations (including EKA, LPW, LLW and SBD in the UK, and UK-territories IMS stations) are publically available. Blacknest also has a large amount of historic data from various events digitised from analogue sources.

For access to the continuous data from the UK stations or the historic event data, please use the Data tab in the site navigation above.