Measuring Extremely Low Radiation Damage to Materials for Nuclear Enrichment Forensics with Professor Michael Short

Professor Michael Short (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) ‘Measuring Extremely Low Radiation Damage to Materials for Nuclear Enrichment Forensics’

Every country that has made nuclear weapons has used uranium enrichment. Despite the centrality of this technology to international security, there is still no reliable physical marker of past enrichment that can be used to perform forensic verification of historically produced weapons. 

We show that the extremely low radioactivity from uranium alpha emissions during enrichment leaves detectable and irreversible calorimetric signatures in common enrichment materials, allowing for historical reconstruction of past enrichment activities at a sensitivity better than one weapon's quantity of highly enriched uranium. 

Fast scanning calorimetry also enables the measurement of sequentially microtomed slices, confirming the magnitude and the type of radiation exposure while also providing a detection of tampering and a method for analyzing field samples useful for treaty verification. 

This work opens the door for common items to be turned into precise dosimeters to detect the past presence of radioactivity, nuclear materials, and related activities with high confidence.

Professor Michael  is Associate Professor in Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT who is really a materials scientist and we are very honored to have him with us.