US Ability To Identify Source of Nuclear Weapons Decays 139
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times covers a report released by the National Research Council, which says the ability of the US to identify the source of a nuclear weapon used in a terrorist attack is fragile and eroding. The goals of the highly specialized detective work, known as nuclear attribution, is to clarify options for retaliation and to deter terrorists by letting them know that nuclear devices have fingerprints that atomic specialists can find and trace. 'Although US nuclear forensics capabilities are substantial and can be improved, right now they are fragile, under-resourced and, in some respects, deteriorating,' the report warns. 'Without strong leadership, careful planning and additional funds, these capabilities will decline.' The report calls on the federal government to take steps to strengthen its forensic capabilities and argues for the necessity of better planning, more robust budgets, clearer lines of authority and more realistic exercises."
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, Sandia is not the design lab you are looking for. You are confusing them with Los Alamos and Livermore.
I respect the fact that you have a four digit UID, but the problem is not as trivial as you make it out to be.
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Would part of the problem be that they suspect that there are breeder reactors for which they do not have the appropriate data?
I'm no physicist... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm no physicist, but the first thing that came to mind--without having any idea how they actually track this stuff--is doping.
One would think that the places that produced this stuff would automatically fingerprint it by doping the material with rare elements, stuff that can only be produced in expensive labs or the nuclear plants themselves--such as Neptunium and Protactinium. Just enough of the elements, and in proportions specific to the place of origin, to ID the source of the product.
Whether or not this stuff would be intact and usable for identification purposes after a detonation, no idea, but it would at least allow for confirmation-of-source on materials before they are actually incorporated into a device. And, lets face it, this is the time we want to be identifying sources--not when we are taking ground-zero samples.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Every reactor produces unique isotopes. It's an absolutely unique fingerprint. It will be present in the plutonium (unless you are suggesting that someone is going to refine plutonium to near 100%) and has been used for decades. Air monitors during the cold war would harvest particles of radioactive debris from surface testing, permitting identification of which reactor the material was from.
Almost nobody actually makes a pure uranium bomb. Horribly inefficient stuff. You need a lot of it to do anything, which immediately makes missiles impractical. Even if you did use uranium, the impurities would give away which mine it came from. Again, that is unique.
No, I said Sandia because they do more interesting work. Los Alamos is, frankly, dull.
(I have a 4-digit ID, yes, but far more importantly I was taught by an expert in radio-chemistry - which is why I was able to do said A-level project - who had been working on this kind of stuff since the 70s. He had fully automated radioisotope analysis down to a fine art by 1979.)
Re:Single-mindedness (Score:3, Interesting)
Get this: Osama Bin Laden hates music. He considers it a tool of the devil.
Which just emphasises how insane the US policy of meddling in terrorism by funding and training him, and others of the same type, actually was.
they want us to stop supporting the Saudi government
One of the reasons Saudi Arabia produces so many fundamentalists, especially rich fundamentalists who support global terrorism, is that it is a fundamentalist state in the first place. Do you really think that actively supporting the status quo in the country that is the major source of funding for Islamic fundamentalism is going to have any result other than providing more funding for fundamentalists.
especially letting Israel disappear, that would be inhumane.
On the other hand its fine for Palestine to disappear, its humane for a Palestinian man to be convicted for rape because he had pretended to be Jewish, its OK to steal people's homes.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
They would be able to tell that a given sample was from a fast-breeder reactor, they'd also be able to tell that it was not one they'd got data for and they'd probably be able to tell which uranium mine the ore was from (there aren't many and no more are likely to be discovered at any depth we have the technology to operate at at this time). Since the fingerprint is unique, and since radioactive waste is awfully hard to get rid of subtly, it would be extremely quick and easy to find where the reactor was.
An example of just how hard it is to hide these kinds of signatures -- the Russian who was poisoned by Polonium in London some years back. They can identify not only which reactor but which reactor vessel that Polonium came from. And that was with a very very trace sample. (As I recall, it was identified within a few hours of it being established Polonium was used.) Polonium has a half-life of 138.376 days. Since Britain closed Daresbury's 20MeV tandem accelerator, the options for doing a high-resolution run would have been limited, but they would certainly have been able to tell to within a day or two when the Polonium had been produced.
THAT is the kind of fingerprinting that can be done. Hell, even with my A-Level project software, I was able to isolate almost every radioisotope in the Chernobyl fallout from just the gamma signatures and no AMS at all. (Every radioisotope not only has a unique mass, it also has a unique energy signature.)
What would it take to get a sample for analyzing? Well, you get a bucket that you can open and close at both ends. You lower it into the water and take a sample. There won't be much plutonium or uranium floating near the surface, but there'll be enough even a few feet below to analyze. Back in 1978, that's how most of the research on the nuclear waste in the Irish Sea was done - with buckets, string, a dinghy and someone to keep look-out. Nothing fancier was needed and the results were staggeringly good. An actual core sample from the radioactive sludge would not have given you better results.
The thing is, it's almost impossible for a reactor to not release enough waste for it to be (a) identified as a nuclear reactor, and (b) listed alongside its radioisotope signature. No country - USA and Russia included - has ever successfully hidden a reactor. At least, not for more than about a week. And the kit needed by a radiochemist to do any serious work is virtually nothing. At the time of Chernobyl, it was possible to take a mobile lab up to any farm in the Cumbrian hills and do studies of soil, lichen and sheep. If the US Navy can't fit such a lab into a small manned submersible or even an ROV, it's their own damn fault.
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
In FY2009 alone there was a sizable chunk of money spent. You should implement you concept and sell it to the USG. Otherwise, please do not insult the people who are working on this program.