NUCLEAR FORENSICS OF SPECIAL NUCLEAR MATERIAL AT LOS ALAMOS: THREE RECENT STUDIES.

Nuclear forensics of special nuclear materials is a highly specialized field because there are few analytical laboratories in the world that can safely handle nuclear materials, perform high accuracy and precision analysis using validated analytical methods. The goal of nuclear forensics is to establish an unambiguous link between illicitly trafficked nuclear material and its origin. The Los Alamos National Laboratory Nuclear Materials Signatures Program has implemented a graded "conduct of operations" type approach for determining the unique nuclear, chemical, and physical signatures needed to identify the manufacturing process, intended use, and origin of interdicted nuclear material. In our approach an analysis flow path was developed for determining key signatures necessary for attributing unknown materials to a source. This analysis flow path included both destructive (i.e., alpha spectrometry, ICP-MS, ICP-AES, TIMS, particle size distribution, density and particle fractionation) and non-destructive (i.e., gamma-ray spectrometry, optical microscopy, SEM, XRD, and x-ray fluorescence) characterization techniques. Analytical techniques and results from three recent cases characterized by this analysis flow path along with an evaluation of the usefulness of this approach will be discussed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]