Challenges and Opportunities in Scientific and Technological Support for Monitoring in the Non-proliferation Regime

Abstract

This paper focuses largely on the challenges and opportunities for monitoring declared and undeclared facilities for other than peaceful uses. There are five technology areas for monitoring that will be addressed: (1) wide area environmental sampling, (2) open-source satellite imagery, (3) civil society reporting, (4) antineutrino detection, and (5) data fusion and automation to combine information from multiple sources. Although not covered in this paper, another challenging area for Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) monitoring and verification is nuclear weapons dismantlement. This topic is being addressed by the public-private partnership between the U.S. Department of State and the Nuclear Threat Initiative called the International Partnership for Nuclear Disarmament Verification. Monitoring nuclear weapons dismantlement is technically very challenging and there is no silver bullet, but through this effort progress is being made. Wide Area Environmental Sampling-Techniques for wide area environmental sampling include collection and analysis of atmospheric gases, atmospheric particulates, aquatic materials, vegetation, sediments and soils, and/or fauna. Historically environmental sampling has been deemed too expensive for practical use by the IAEA. Of the possible wide area sampling techniques, atmospheric sampling has long been thought to be the most effective. Relevant nuclear signatures include Krypton-85 gas as a by-product of Plutonium reprocessing, and Uranyl Fluoride (UO 2 F 2) aerosol from the interaction of leaked Uranium Hexafluoride (UF 6) and the air during Uranium enrichment. Reported challenges for atmospheric monitoring include 1 : the high 1 Wogman [1] and STR-341 from 1995 and re-visit in 2010.