Nuclear Forensics A Capability at Risk (Abbreviated Version) (2010) / Chapter Skim
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From page 3... ...
The United States has technical capabilities to analyze interdicted nuclear and radiological devices and the materials that can be used to make them, analyze the signals and debris from a nuclear detonation or radiological dispersion, and simulate materials production and weapons performance. Together, these nuclear forensics capabilities can help answer the president's questions by learning what the materials are; how, when, and possibly where they were made; what has been done with them since they were made; and, in the case of a nuclear device, features of the device's design, construction, and performance.
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nuclear weapons stockpile without additional nuclear testing. Although this experience is valuable for nuclear forensics, it is much more challenging to work from observations of unknown materials or from detonation debris from unknown devices and analyze and interpret them accurately and quickly.
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Major areas of concern include the complex organization of nuclear forensics efforts within the federal government; the sustainability of a nuclear forensics capability that relies on base support from a shrinking nuclear weapons program for facilities, equipment, and personnel; a diminishing workforce and aging infrastructure; and reliance on procedures and tools developed during the Cold War, which may not be optimized for the nuclear forensics mission. Each of these is described in more detail below along with the committee's major findings and recommendations, which appear in bold text.
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DHS, the cooperating agencies, and the President's National Security Staff must develop and issue the appropriate requirements documents. SUSTAINABILITY The existing nuclear forensics capabilities are highly leveraged off of the nuclear weapons program and other related programs.
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Weapons designers mainly work on stockpile stewardship and on R&D to support that program. But for weapon designers there is still relevant nuclear forensics work outside of exercises, such as analyzing the predicted performance of unconventional improvised-nuclear-device designs, foreign weapons, underperforming known designs, and nuclear explosives detonated in urban environments.
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The cost of constructing new facilities for handling special nuclear material2 and highly radioactive material is large, so careful investment or replacement decisions are required, particularly if necessary redundant analytical capabilities are to be maintained. Funding for these investments is difficult to obtain today in part because a coordinated and integrated program plan has not yet been created.
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From page 9... ...
The committee favors the development of an R&D effort that pursues both evolutionary improvements in the existing nuclear forensics methods and techniques as well as entirely new methods and techniques having far greater capabilities than those currently available. In addition to building the expert personnel base, the program needs: • Improved sampling procedures, especially for urban environments, informed by simulations of a variety of detonation scenarios; • Improved laboratory techniques, including increased automation, improved techniques for sample preparation and laboratory analysis that extract more useful information from a spectrum of sample types and matrices, and techniques that more readily comply with EH&S requirements; • Proper and defensible validation protocols for analytical methods; • A better understanding of measurements that have been and could be made on nuclear materials production facilities and nuclear detonations; • Improved techniques to assess uncertainties in sampling, laboratory analysis, and data evaluation; • Validated and more complete databases of nuclear materials, facilities, and devices, including advanced querying techniques to extract information from incomplete and/or noisy data and find signatures and correlations among entries; and possibly • New or newly deployed equipment for prompt diagnostics.
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While nuclear forensics procedures and standards will be developed for emergency or near-emergency situations, it makes sense for them to be rooted in the same underlying principles that are intended to guide modern forensic science. Many nuclear forensics techniques already have a strong scientific basis and so would fit well into a scientifically based forensic science framework.
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From page 11... ...
Recommendation 6: The nuclear forensics community should develop and adhere to standards and procedures that are rooted in the applicable underlying principles that have been recommended for modern forensic science, including calibration using reference standards; cross comparison with other methods; inter-laboratory comparisons; and identification, propagation, and characterization of uncertainties. Even a casual observer of forensic science understands that databases are important tools for determining the possible origins and history of a material or an object: analysts compare the sample under scrutiny to a set of known samples.
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government organizes and enhances its databases and nuclear forensics methods, the Executive Office of the President and the Department of State, working with the community of nuclear forensics experts, should develop policies on classes of data and methods to be shared internationally and explore mechanisms to accomplish that sharing. The United States should decide whether to share analytical methods to foster development of a broader international scientific base for conducting nuclear forensics.
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