As a means to prevent and respond to a nuclear security event, nuclear forensics provides information on the origin and history of nuclear and other radioactive materials under regulatory control in the context of international legal instruments and national laws related to nuclear security. By bridging nuclear science and security with law enforcement, nuclear forensic findings link people, places, materials and events relevant to law enforcement investigations and nuclear security vulnerability assessments. Because nuclear forensic findings may be used in legal proceedings, the highest level of confidence must underpin an examination’s findings.
Coordinated research in nuclear forensics promotes innovation using access to state of practice analytical and interpretative tools, provides objective scientific review of methods pertinent to an examination and promotes sharing of results between those countries with developed capabilities and others that are developing nuclear forensics.
Recent research has focused on the identification of nuclear forensics data characteristics (or signatures) in nuclear and other radioactive materials to ascertain their origin and history, means for their accurate measurement and prediction, the controls over their incorporation and persistence across the nuclear fuel cycle, and how these signatures can be exploited as part of a nuclear forensic examination.
Outcomes of this research highlight the development of new nuclear forensic analytical techniques to include nuclear and radioactive material age dating (i.e., time of production), morphology studies of nuclear materials bearing on origin and history; investigation of nuclear microparticles; the role of modelling to identify the origin of spent nuclear fuels as well as the application of rare-earth elements to differentiate uranium ores and concentrates.
Investigators identified four common technical themes from the conduct of the research programme. The ability to link nuclear forensic signatures to specific stages of the nuclear fuel cycle requires: i) access to relevant sample materials, ii) the identification of signatures incorporated in nuclear or other radioactive materials geologically or through processing steps, iii) accurate and precise measurements (or predictions) and iv) the ability to perform inter-comparisons between data collected on the material of interest and a knowledge base of known material to potentially include in a national nuclear forensic library.
This coordinated research indicates that analytical and predictive tools can be used to identify high confidence signatures reflecting the origin and history of nuclear and radioactive materials. Applied to a diverse suite of samples, a nuclear forensics examination can resolve different origins of samples representing the same stage of the nuclear fuel cycle. Multiple signatures build confidence in nuclear forensic findings; taken together, there is a great likelihood of an unequivocal result supporting an investigation. The present research provides an abundance of new signatures applicable to a nuclear forensics examination.
Researchers from Australia, Brazil, Canada, the European Commission, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Sweden, and South Africa participated in this CRP. Experts from Russia participated in related research through individual research contracts.
The results of the three-year CRP were published as IAEA TECDOC-1820 (2017): https://www-pub.iaea.org/books/iaeabooks/12231/Identification-of-High-Confidence-Nuclear-Forensics-Signatures
For more information, please see the CRP description:
http://www.dgdingfa.net/projects/crp/j02003
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