Global Security Newswire

The Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee will house uranium samples that could help in determining the origin of material used in a nuclear strike or seized from would-be traffickers, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported on Tuesday (see GSN, March 9).

Roughly 15 to 20 samples have been collected to date for the National Uranium Materials Archives. The characteristics of those materials and other samples to be stored at Y-12 could be compared against features of uranium that is seized or left over following an atomic explosion. Such nuclear forensics efforts could help investigators to determine where the material came from and possibly how it ended up in the hands of bad actors.

"We're just going to analyze samples supplied to us by the" National Nuclear Security Administration, said physical chemist and archives effort chief Greg Schaaff.

The nuclear agency, a semiautonomous arm of the Energy Department, did not provide further details about the program.

Police organizations would have access to the uranium archive and the DOE Nuclear Materials Information Program for investigations of an atomic event.

The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico holds a corresponding bank of samples of plutonium and additional atomic substances, the newspaper reported (Frank Munger, Knoxville News Sentinel, April 17).