"Wolfgang Weiss currently chairs the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR). Weiss, a physicist by training, was the driving force behind the creation of a national environmental radiological surveillance system in Germany after the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Today, he heads the Department of Radiation Protection and Health of the German Federal Office for Radiation Protection. He was involved in the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) as a member of the German delegation when the Treaty was being negotiated at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva in the mid-1990s.Weiss spoke to the CTBTO on the margins of the Science & Technology Conference 2011, where he was a panellist in the special session on the Fukushima nuclear accident. In his interview, he emphasizes the importance of CTBTO data as a first-hand source of information on radioactive emissions from nuclear accidents. --- More on the 2011 Science & Technology conference: http://www.ctbto.org/specials/ctbt-science-and-technology-20118-10-june-2011-vienna-austria/ctbt-science-and-technology-2011/Disclaimer: The views expressed in this interview do not necessarily reflect the positions of the CTBTO."