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US Ability To Identify Source of Nuclear Weapons Decays
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."
If a nuke goes off in a US city, we have an excuse for stalling on identifying who's responsible while politicians have a knee-jerk reaction and send US soldiers (or missiles, or UAV's) off on another enormously profitable foreign adventure. And if it turns out they're wrong, we can blame it on anonymous technicians with "decaying skills".
I imagine that they are looking for neutron ratios and possibly gamma energy levels?
Tisha Hayes
This is hardly rocket science. You get a sample from each reactor and perform an AMS* run on it. This gives you a fingerprint for that reactor. You get a sample from a nuclear weapon (pre-detonation or post-detonation) or fallout from debris (as in the case of Chernobyl) and perform an AMS* run on that.
*You can also look for specific gamma energies.
My A-Level computer science project could take the masses or energies and correctly infer which isotopes were present, in what ratios, and which reactor the sample likely came from. It double-checked by looking for daughter isotopes (decay products), since there are isotopes that look similar but follow different decay paths. I wrote that in less than a year in Turbo Pascal for the IBM PC.
And the US Government is now saying that all of its nuclear labs combined can't either write their own frigging version, don't have the books I worked from, and don't have any AMS equipment to collect fresh data as needed?
If they are that stupid and incompetent in relation to my talent and skills, when can I expect them to hand Sandia over to my care?
Oh, they're not? Then maybe there's something seriously dodgy about their claim.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
First. we nuke all the commies. Thirdly. we nuke all the arabs. Seconded. we go get the oil . Teh plan is ideal.
So they're calling for more funding for yet another war related activity because it might decline. Where are the calls for more funding for activities that protect areas where substantial decline has already been witnessed? Like for more funding for the ACLU? A warning that civil liberties and democratic process is declining? Basically, how come this reads like yet another case of media lobby work?
"We have still have almost half of our budget not spent on war technology! Let's get on it!"
I wonder if you realize how right you are about the way the USA does things. From the summary:
You know what else is fragile, under-resourced, and in many respects deteriorating? Our willingness to examine the connection between meddling in the affairs of soverign nations and their more radical factions' desire to go to extremes in order to attack us.
For those who feel inclined to speak about this without having done any research (like that stops anyone these days), I'll sum it up briefly. The USA has a habit of using its intelligence services to overthrow democratically elected officials in foreign countries and usually replaces them with dictators more favorable to its economic interests. Iran during the 1950s is a good example, though only one of many. Do a little research and it is easy enough to come up with several examples of this behavior.
Does anyone plan to argue that this does not constitute provocation in the eyes of those who suffer because of this practice? Yes, the way they retaliate is inhuman and reprehensible, particularly when they go after civilians. I fully agree with that. What I reject is the notion that "they hate us because of our freedoms". I think it's more like, they hate us because they want to be left alone. If that's the case, and if our goal is to end this sort of terrorism, our first responsibility is to end the practices of ours that encourage it. Then we are in a better position to go after the people who persist and come up with better ways to deter them.
If anyone wants a list that they can start researching, I found a decent one here. It's just a list to help you get started. If you want to be informed on this subject you will have to do your own research. If you take the time to do that, however, what will amaze you is how little retaliation there has been.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
'Although US nuclear forensics capabilities are substantial and can be improved, right now they are fragile, under-resourced and, in some respects, deteriorating,'
Fifteen years ago they had full capabilities, but only five years later their capacity was cut in half. Then, in 2005 they found that their capabilities were down to 25%. Today they are working at 12.5% effectiveness. At this point their capabilities are so degraded they have no idea what will be left in 2015.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
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.
US federal government agencies are inept when it comes to a lot of things. (No political bias intended). Take a look at recent defense acquisition programs, business and wall street regulation... The virtues of "strong leadership [and] careful planning" seem to be in short supply thoughout the system.
Half-life decay!
... we could just blame Iran for whatever and save a buttload on that nerdy nuclear forensics.
This is a big, fat, hairy deterrent to developing nuclear arms. "This terrorist nuke came from (spin the wheel on hated regimes du jour!) Dumfucistan! Dumfucistan, here's a million tons of conventional ordinance dropped on the head of each and every last goat-herder inside your borders and summary execution for your Prime Minister For Life and all his family! Congratulations, Dumfucistan! Meanwhile, Pakistan, we're still all good friends, right? It wasn't your rogue intelligence service that slipped Osama a nuke on the sly, right? It would be a shame if we spun the wheel and it turned up "Pakistan", right?
The implication is that a large part of the deterrent is the belief that the US can determine exactly where the nuke came from, and reply in kind. By announcing that that ability is decaying, that deterrent is completely undermined.
While obviously it's better if we can actually do what we say we can, it's the belief that we can that (theoretically) keeps people in check.
From unsuspecting taxpayers, and less unsuspecting lawmakers. Later are ready to spend, and sooo happy when they get so good excuses.
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
ok.
three men, one pakistani, one iraqi, and one america detonate a bomb with nuclear material traced to russia.
who do we nuke in retaliation?
and in which order?
The US once had a huge nuclear weapons establishment - Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, Hanford, Sandia, Lawerence Livermore, Rocky Flats, and a other big installations, most dating from WWII. Today, the major activity at most of those sites dealing with toxic waste. Almost everyone who ever designed a working nuclear weapon is retired or dead. The US hasn't built a major power reactor in decades. Smart young people don't go into nuclear engineering or nuclear physics. There's just no demand for new work in the field. It's surprising that there's still a nuclear forensics capability left at all.
"Nuclear forensics", should it ever be needed, will have to be done by people who usually do something else. Probably deal with nuclear waste.
... I am sure that you can't replace the entire US nuclear forensics programme with an 18 year old with an A level in Computer Science. I'm guessing there's a few folk with PhDs and the like in their organisation who are doing more than playing darts and watching day time tv. What do you think? Is it all a con? could it be replaced by a single teenaged student?
Is that you, Noam?
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
Since he's very right. I'm tired of morons twisting well-known historical facts just to fit into whatever flawed ideology they support.
The Japanese (be they military or civilians) were ashamed and forbidden to surrender yet had no way of avoiding defeat. The only possible outcome from an American invasion of the mainland Japan would have been millions of killed and suicided Japanese (both military and civilians) and hundreds of thousand of US forces being killed in the process. The only way out was the word of the Emperor himself - considered God-like. And the only way to force the Emperor to make his voice heard in public for the very first time was to raise the stakes with the 2 atomic bombings.
Ugly? Yes. Necessary under that particular situation? Absolutely.
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
I mean, *real* history books. Not the kind Noam Chomsky & his fans keep manufacturing.
Don't take it personal, but nothing that you said is supported by historical evidence: contemporary papers, contemporary witnesses, and facts.
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
So, you know who the perpetrators stole it from. What good does that do?
Even if you could find the dozen or hundred people who did it and "bring them to justice," as a President vowed we would do to Osama bin Laden--even if you could subject them to capital punishment... how would that compensate for what they had done, or deter others from doing it?
H. G. Wells wrote in 1914, in a novel called "The World Set Free," "Certainly it seems now that nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the earlier twentieth century than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible. And as certainly they did not see it. They did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands... the power to inflict a blow, the power to destroy, was continually increasing. There was no increase whatever in the ability to escape. Every sort of passive defence, armour, fortifications, and so forth, was being outmastered by this tremendous increase on the destructive side. Destruction was becoming so facile that any little body of malcontents could use it; it was revolutionising the problems of police and internal rule. Before the last war began it was a matter of common knowledge that a man could carry about in a handbag an amount of latent energy sufficient to wreck half a city...."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
"they are fragile, under-resourced and, in some respects, deteriorating"
Any one else read that as:
"The only people who know how to do this are getting old and dying on us"?
Anything is possible given time and money.
If a Nuke went off in an American city YOU would NEVER KNOW IT !!!!!!
They would blame it on a meteor, ALL meteors are radioactive, or Earthquake, how about an electrical power plant malfunction, wo wa natural gas explosion, or maybe an ALIEN ATTACK, anything accept what it actually was because the truth limits their ability to respond as THEY choose !
At least in our leaders TWISTED MINDS that is how it works. !!
And they have YOU totally conditioned to accept their MADNESS as rational and intelligent -- THINK AGAIN !!!
3M developed 'Microtaggant', low in cost, and when added to each batch of conventional explosives, provided what is essentially a serial number, able to provide a post-detonation ID of the explosive's source.
Their marketing efforts were a dismal failure.
Why wouldn't a government want the source of an explosive identified?
http://www.microtaggant.com/microtaggant.htm
The US need to up its welfare system more than provide any other agency with additional funds. Signed The President of the United Socialist Elites of Obama
"The laws of science be a harsh mistress." --Bender