Medical News Today
Article Date: 18 Feb 2008 - 0:00 PST
A terrorist nuclear explosion devastates Manhattan, but no group takes credit.
The pressure on the U.S. president to retaliate is intense. Acting on sketchy
information, the president orders an attack, but it turns out to be the wrong
terrorists, in the wrong country. Things go downhill from there.
To
avoid that and other nightmare scenarios, a group of 12 scientists with
extensive nuclear expertise, headed by Stanford physicist Michael May, is urging
an international push to improve the science of nuclear forensics.
May
is a research professor emeritus and former co-director the Center for
International Security and Cooperation. He also is the former director of the
U.S. nuclear weapons design laboratory in Livermore, Calif. Other members have
experience in nuclear intelligence and defense research. One member, Jay Davis,
was a United Nations inspector in Iraq.
They say there is an urgent need
for more nuclear detectives, armed with science PhDs and instilled with the
instincts of an investigator. And those detectives will need training, advanced
equipment and stronger ties to intelligence agencies, political leaders and law
enforcement.
With the right mobile equipment, nuclear detectives could
sift through the debris and the radioactive cloud of an attack in this country
or elsewhere and quickly glean crucial information, the scientists argued in a
60-page report discussed Feb. 16 at the annual meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston.
The report,
Nuclear Forensics: Role, State of the Art, Program Needs, was written by a joint
working group of the AAAS and the American Physical Society.
Using
radiochemistry techniques and access to proposed international databases that
include actual samples of uranium and plutonium from around the world, the
nuclear investigators might be able to tell the president - and the world -
where the bomb fuel came from, or at least rule out some suspects.
"Nuclear forensics can make a difference," May said in an interview.
But the U.S. capacity for such investigations has deteriorated since the
end of the Cold War, when the capabilities were well supported at the nuclear
weapons laboratories. "Presently available trained personnel are highly skilled,
but there are not enough of them to deal with an emergency and they are not
being replaced," according to May. "A program to refill the pipeline of trained
personnel should be undertaken."
There's also a need for development of
new equipment, both in the lab and on the street, which could provide a faster
analysis during a crisis. The authors also recommend more coordination between
scientists and law enforcement; even simple steps such as trading phone numbers
could prove crucial. "You really want the top decision makers to know where to
get information," May said.
The remnants of an atomic explosion carry a
host of clues, even at the microscopic level, including crystal structures and
impurities.
Uranium, for example, varies in isotopic composition and
impurities according to where it was mined and how it was processed.
Weapons-grade plutonium can be exposed during its production to different
neutron fluxes and energies, depending on the particular reactor used. It is
also possible to establish the length of time plutonium spent in the reactor.
In some cases, it may be possible for scientists at Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory or Los Alamos National Laboratory to use their experience,
intelligence data and software codes to reverse-engineer a nuclear bomb from its
debris and learn telltale details of the design of the explosive.
These
clues would not be the equivalent of fingerprints or DNA, May said, but would in
most cases allow officials to at least rule out or in broad classes of possible
sources.
Tracing bomb material to its source may be only the beginning
of an investigation, rather than the end, as the authors acknowledge.
Discovering that a terrorist explosive was made of uranium stolen from a
specific site in Russia, for example, does not identify the terrorists, but it
does provide a starting point, especially if there is suspicion that the bomb
makers had inside help.
In their report, the scientists recommend that
atomic sleuthing be applied also to radioactive materials seized by law
enforcement agencies or border guards. Tracking the substances back to their
source might prevent or deter attacks, they said. The authors note that the
International Atomic Energy Agency's Illicit Trafficking Database contains 1,080
confirmed events involving illicit trafficking in nuclear and other radioactive
materials between 1993 and 2006.
Convincing the nuclear states to share
database information about their own uranium and plutonium may be difficult, May
said. He suggests that the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has
databases of its own, could play an important role.
----------------------------
Article adapted by Medical News Today
from original press release.
----------------------------
The
authors of the report:
Michael May, Chair, Stanford University
Reza
Abedin-Zadeh, International Atomic Energy Agency (retired)
Donald Barr, Los
Alamos National Laboratory (retired)
Albert Carnesale, University of
California-Los Angeles
Philip E. Coyle, Center for Defense Information
Jay
Davis, Hertz Foundation
Bill Dorland, University of Maryland
Bill Dunlop,
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Steve Fetter, University of
Maryland
Alexander Glaser, Princeton University
Ian D. Hutcheon, Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory
Francis Slakey, American Physical
Society
Benn Tannenbaum, American Association for the Advancement of Science
RELEVANT WEB URLS:
ABOUT MICHAEL MAY
AFTER THE BOMB
Source: Dan Stober
Stanford University
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