Development of an isotope-sensitive warhead verification technique using nuclear resonance fluorescence

Nearly three decades after the end of the Cold War, nuclear arms control remains a pressing global issue. Despite obligations under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) to make 'good-faith efforts' to disarm their nuclear arsenals, the United States and Russia still maintain thousands of nuclear warheads. Progress towards complete disarmament has been gradual due to a variety of socio-political barriers, but future efforts towards nuclear arms reduction will face an additional technological hurdle: no technology exists to verify that warheads slated for dismantlement are authentic without revealing any sensitive weapons design information in the process. Despite several decades of research, no technology has solved this apparent paradox between information security and confidence in a warhead verification measurement.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Vavrek, Jayson Robert.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Areg Danagoulian and R. Scott Kemp.

• Nuclear Science and Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/123367

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/123367