The March 30 release of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) generated significant media attention, several opeds, and welcoming statements from key senators.

Released at a press briefing late on a Friday afternoon before a two-week Congressional recess, the NAS study -- "The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban - Technical Issues for the United States"-- might easily have been overlooked by the media and members of Congress.

Fortunately, long-awaited report was covered by several prominent news outlets.

Matt's Wald's story "U.S. Has No Need to Test Atomic Arsenal, Report Says" in The New York Times highlighted that the report’s conclusions “run counter to some of the arguments” used by opponents of the CTBT during the failed attempt to ratify the treaty in 1999.

“We’ve done life extension programs, and we’ve shown we’re able to reset the clock on these weapons,” said Marvin L. Adams, a professor of nuclear engineering at Texas A&M University and a co-author of the report said at the NAS report briefing. Judging from the last ten years, he said in The New York Times, “the summary conclusion is that: yup, it’s difficult, but, gosh, we can do it.”

No sooner than it had pledged on February 29 to halt long-range ballistic missile tests, nuclear testing, and uranium enrichment at its Yongbyong nuclear facility, the North Korean regime announced it would launch a long-range ballistic missile-ostensibly to lift a satellite into orbit. The April 12 launch failed shortly after liftoff, the fourth such long-range missile test failure.

While North Korea probably cannot miniaturize a nuclear warhead to fit on its missiles yet, a third nuclear test would allow them to make significant progress in that direction.

Now the governments of the United States, China, and other leading nations must focus on the difficult task of preventing North Korea from conducting another nuclear weapon test explosion.

In 2006 and 2009 we saw a cycle of escalation in which North Korea launched a long-range rocket, which drew international rebuke, and then North Korea responded with a nuclear test explosion on each occasion.

Another long-range ballistic missile test launch--even a failed one--is a problem. A ballistic missile test launch followed by another nuclear test explosion, followed by accelerated uranium enrichment activities, is a much more significant problem.

News reports and satellite analysis from experts at the Web site www.38north.org suggest that a North Korean nuclear test explosion could soon be conducted.

From 1946-1958, the United States conducted a series of 67 atmospheric nuclear test explosions in the South Pacific that devastated the indigenous peoples in the Marshall Islands. During most ofthat time, the Marshall Islands was a part of the United Nations Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands administered by the United States.

According to the preliminary findings of United Nations Special Rapporteur Calin Georgescu the communities affected by nuclear testing over sixty years ago in the Marshall Islands are “yet to find durable solutions to the affected population.

“They feel like ‘nomads’ in their own country, and many have suffered long-term health effects,” he said. Georgescu is UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights obligations related to environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and waste. His is the first mission ever to the Republic of the Marshall Islands by an independent expert of the UN Human Rights Council.

“I have listened to the concerns and stories of affected communities from Bikini, Enewetak, Rongelap and Utrik. As a result of the nuclear testing, all of these communities have suffered dislocation, in one form or another, from their indigenous way of life,” he noted.

His report will be finalized and delivered to the UN Human Rights Commission this September.

Today, the U.S. National Academies of Science released its long-awaited update on technical issues related to the CTBT in Washington.

The independent panel of senior scientific and military experts was charged with reviewing technical changes related to the U.S. nuclear stockpile and to nuclear explosion test monitoring that have occurred in the ten years since the NAS’ 2002 report on the subject.

The study was requested by the Barack Obama administration in 2009 following the President’s call for “immediately” pursuing reconsideration and ratification of the treaty. Although the report was completed in early 2011, its release was delayed by an extensive declassification review lasting some 11 months.

The NAS panel concluded that the NNSA nuclear weapons stockpile stewardship program “has been more successful than was anticipated in 1999,” when the Senate last considered and voted on the CTBT. “Similarly,” the panel said, “the status of U.S. national monitoring and the International Monitoring System has improved to levels better than predicted in 1999.”

The new NAS study found that “provided that sufficient resources and a national commitment to stockpile stewardship are in place … the United States has the technical ability to maintain a safe, secure, and reliable stockpile of nuclear weapons into the foreseeable future without nuclear explosion testing.”