THE SOVIET Union’s detonation of its first nuclear device in August 1949—just four years after the end of World War II—is remembered as a startling event for the United States and its allies, who had expected the American monopoly on nuclear weapons to endure for several more years. Yet for all the shockwaves the test sent through Western governments, the world learned of the event not from a triumphant Soviet declaration but rather when President Harry S. Truman revealed its occurrence several weeks later. The United States’ conclusion that the USSR had tested a nuclear device followed the routine flight of a U.S. Air Force WB-29 weather reconnaissance aircraft from Japan to Alaska a few days after the detonation. Outfitted with filters to pick up radiological debris from an atmospheric nuclear test, this collection platform provided U.S. and allied scientists with the basis for Truman’s dramatic announcement: “We have evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the USSR.”

The United States’ detection of the first Soviet nuclear test involved a set of scientific disciplines now commonly known as nuclear forensics. First developed for nuclear test monitoring and treaty verification purposes during the Cold War, modern nuclear forensic capabilities are now used to determine the provenance of nuclear materials found outside of regulatory control, such as those seized from nuclear smugglers. Additionally, if a terrorist nuclear device were interdicted before detonation, analysis of the nuclear material and device design may yield information about its origin and manufacturer. Should terrorists succeed in detonating a nuclear device, post-detonation debris analysis can help determine the source of the nuclear material used in the weapon, as well as provide insights about the device design that may help identify the perpetrator. Like criminal forensic analysis of blood samples, hairs, and fibers from crime scenes, the data gathered in the nuclear forensic process can help attribute the malicious use of nuclear material, including a hostile government’s provision of plutonium or uranium to terrorists.

Although the link between nuclear forensics and the prevention of nuclear terrorism is widely understood—and embedded in numerous policies and legislation—there exist many less familiar but equally vital functions of these tools. Nuclear forensic capabilities can today be used to attribute or resolve ambiguities about a wide range of what might be termed “unattributed nuclear events,” both malicious and unintentional. These include undisclosed accidents at civil or military nuclear facilities, nuclear weapon mishaps in denied geographic areas, or perhaps even an accidental nuclear detonation. Other ambiguous scenarios may involve a state’s limited use of nuclear weapons in a regional conflict and subsequent denial thereof or an attempt to blame a clandestine nuclear attack on non-state actors. In addition to the intrinsic effects of these scenarios—lives lost, economic disruption, environmental degradation—each may create conditions in which uncertainty about what happened and who was responsible could lead to cascading effects of far greater magnitude. 

Among the lessons learned from a variety of nuclear incidents and accidents over the decades is that there will always be a strong need for dispassionate science during fearful events. To the extent nuclear forensic capabilities can be refined, and analytical findings shared internationally, these tools can assist decisionmakers in grappling with nuclear crises and may help avoid many such incidents in the first place. To realize this promise, however, investments in forensic capabilities must be commensurate with their potentially significant deterrent effects, and national policy requirements must drive advances in forensic science as a complement to other elements of the nation’s nuclear deterrent. Additionally, the broad role technical forensics can play in nuclear deterrence—not only in deterring state support for nuclear terrorism but also helping to reduce many other nuclear threats—must be made more central to the U.S. strategy of deterrence. Only when international perceptions of the efficacy of these tools are more widespread will forensic capabilities influence foreign decisionmaking in the way nuclear weapons themselves have since the beginning of the nuclear age. 

A BRIEF review of the historical applications of nuclear forensics underscores the surprising diversity of these disciplines and perhaps foreshadows the breadth of scenarios to which they may be applied in the coming years. Although the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (DoE/NNSA) national laboratories are principally oriented toward the design and stewardship of U.S. nuclear weapons, the forensics mission attests to the extraordinary range of the laboratories’ scientific contributions to the nation’s defense. From the Cold War genesis of these capabilities to the present day, the history of nuclear forensics suggests that this mission may be coming full circle as the world reverts to an era of renewed great power competition.

Forensics in Nuclear Test Monitoring and Arms Control Treaty Verification. Throughout the Cold War, each of the nuclear powers developed technical capabilities to collect data from not only their own nuclear explosive tests but also others’ as part of an effort to learn as much as possible about foreign nuclear capabilities. These tools included purpose-built detection aircraft, seismic and acoustic sensors, satellite-based detection platforms, and other more unorthodox collection methods. In March 1954, for example, when the crew of a Japanese tuna fishing boat was contaminated by nuclear fallout from a U.S. thermonuclear weapon test in the South Pacific, Lewis Strauss, then head of the Atomic Energy Commission, speculated that the boat was serving as a Soviet collection platform. Having not yet mastered two-stage thermonuclear weapon technology, Soviet radiochemical analysis of the fallout could have provided useful insight into the design of the U.S. device.

Today, hundreds of sensors scan the Earth’s surface and subsurface for the unique signatures of an underground nuclear explosive test, many of which comprise the International Monitoring System (IMS) that was established to monitor nuclear testing under the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Between April 8-9, 2013, for example, an IMS radionuclide station in Takasaki, Japan, detected substantial quantities of the noble gas xenon—a fission product associated with nuclear detonations—which was also detected days later at a station in Ussuriysk, Russia. These detections lent credence to North Korea’s announced nuclear test on February 12, which had also been detected by ninety-four IMS seismic stations around the world. Complementing these sensors is a constellation of geospatial systems specifically designed to detect nuclear explosive tests. Once a nuclear test or event is suspected of having occurred, an array of scientific and intelligence capabilities is brought to bear to provide greater fidelity to test assessments.

While much of the data concerning a nuclear test or incident is collected from sensors and instrumentation built specifically for this purpose, some useful information can be derived serendipitously. One such example is Vela Event Alert 747, also known as the Vela Incident, in September 1979, when a U.S. Vela satellite detected a mysterious double flash of light in the Indian Ocean. Although the cause of the flash has never been conclusively proven or acknowledged, the event is widely believed to have been a clandestine nuclear test, and scientists have spent the last forty years attempting to prove this hypothesis. One recent—albeit controversial—study analyzed previously unavailable data gathered during radiation testing of the thyroid organs of Australian sheep in the months following the incident. Researchers concluded that levels of iodine-131 found in the animals’ thyroids was “consistent with them having grazed in the path of a potential radioactive fallout plume from a 22 September low-yield nuclear test in the Southern Indian Ocean.” On another occasion in 2007, U.S. technicians detected traces of highly enriched uranium (HEU) on aluminum tubes in North Korea that the United States suspected were imported to support a nuclear weapons-related uranium enrichment program. North Korean officials claimed the tubes were being used for conventional weapons and presented two such systems for inspection. The discovery of HEU traces on the tubes added to suspicions that North Korea was pursuing a uranium route to nuclear weapons in addition to its already known plutonium-based weapon program.

Although scientific forensic capabilities have been used to detect state-based nuclear activity for more than seventy years, a more recent incarnation of these tools has involved the non-state nuclear threat. The prospect that terrorists might build and detonate a crude nuclear device was first studied intensively in the 1960s and 1970s; by the time the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, this possibility had emerged as a potent concern. While the immediate response to this danger was a scramble to secure fissile materials in the former Soviet Union, strategists have grasped ever since for additional means to reduce the likelihood that terrorists could acquire a nuclear device. Only more recently has the utility of deterrence been recognized to help achieve that end, as has the necessity of nuclear forensics to fortify deterrent threats.

Forensics in Deterring Nuclear Terrorism. The applicability of deterrence to nuclear terrorism is somewhat counterintuitive given the seemingly undeterrable character of many non-state groups. Because religious or ideological fanatics may not fear death or hold territory that can be attacked in reprisal, deterring would-be nuclear terrorists generally takes the form of “deterrence by denial.” That is, decades of U.S. and international efforts have made nuclear materials extremely difficult for non-state actors to acquire, and vast intelligence resources are dedicated to detecting and disrupting terrorist plots. Consequently, terrorists have made little effort to obtain nuclear capabilities despite a clear interest in these weapons. Yet, terrorists could receive external assistance in acquiring nuclear weapons or materials, including from unscrupulous governments. In this scenario, the more recognizable form of deterrence—threatening a hostile state with unacceptable retaliation—can play an important role in preventing a terrorist nuclear attack. By signaling that a state’s facilitation of nuclear terrorism will be considered virtually synonymous with a direct nuclear strike, the United States has made clear that the costs of providing such assistance to terrorists will always outweigh any conceivable benefits.

The Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review adopted perhaps the most aggressive stance to date on the ramifications of state support for nuclear terrorism: “The United States will hold fully accountable any state, terrorist group, or other non-state actor that supports or enables terrorist efforts to obtain or employ nuclear devices.” Although the document acknowledged the limited role of U.S. nuclear weapons in countering nuclear terrorism, it pointedly noted that “adversaries must understand that a terrorist nuclear attack against the United States or its allies and partners would qualify as an ‘extreme circumstance’ under which the United States could consider the ultimate form of retaliation” (emphasis added). Little ambiguity should exist about the implications of this warning.

Central to the efficacy of such deterrent threats is credibility. In the context of traditional nuclear deterrence, credibility requires both the operational ability to conduct a nuclear attack and the political resolve to do so. For the credibility of nuclear forensics, there is an additional requirement—the ability to determine confidently the origin and pathway of illicitly acquired or deliberately provided nuclear materials and to distinguish between these two modes of acquisition. Following an act of nuclear terrorism, the confidence that U.S. forensic capabilities supply in answering these questions would both strengthen the resolve of American leaders to retaliate and help persuade allied and non-aligned governments of the legitimacy of the United States’ reprisal. Hostile states, foreseeing the linearity from technical forensic analysis to U.S. retaliation, may thus be deterred from facilitating nuclear terrorism in the first place.

Calls to develop and refine nuclear forensic capabilities have been enshrined in a succession of U.S. and international policies and legislation for more than three decades. The 2006 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, for example, included forensics among a list of six objectives to address the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) terrorism. The strategy stated the intention to “develop the capability to assign responsibility for the intended or actual use of WMD via accurate attribution—the rapid fusion of technical forensic data with intelligence and law enforcement information.” More than a decade later, the 2018 National Strategy for Countering WMD Terrorism echoed this requirement but went further, drawing a direct link between forensics and deterrence. “Deterring hostile states and individuals from supporting WMD terrorists requires the means to quickly and accurately attribute such support,” noted the strategy, which pledged to “refine the accuracy, timeliness, and confidence of forensic capabilities to identify the source of … nuclear materials, weapons, or components used in terrorist attacks.”

In the immediate aftermath of a terrorist nuclear attack, little imagination is required to envision the urgency with which policymakers would demand answers as to the origin of the material used and whether a hostile state had provided it wittingly to terrorists. In this context, the importance of speed cannot be overstated; analytic processes that may require weeks to provide confident results would far exceed the window of time in which national leaders would desire—and be expected—to respond. Among the most pressing questions U.S. leaders would face is whether the attack was a one-off event or if subsequent detonations might occur. The rapid ability to identify the source of the nuclear material used would allow the United States to press the source government—now identified as the likely point or origin, if not the culprit, and thus under the threat of retaliation—to answer whether additional material had been supplied or was unaccounted for.

To be sure, nuclear forensic analysis would represent just one element of a post-attack investigation, along with vitally important inputs from the intelligence and law enforcement communities, as well as contributions from allies and international entities such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Yet forensic analysis at the DoE and NNSA national laboratories would yield scientific insights available from no other source. As these capabilities continue to mature, including improvements in the speed with which outputs can be delivered to national decisionmakers, they may be harnessed to resolve uncertainty about a broader range of nuclear incidents, from overtly hostile acts to accidents and other unexplained phenomena.

Forensics in Resolving Hostile Unattributed Nuclear Events. Since the advent of the nuclear age, the threat posed by nuclear weapons has overwhelmingly come from traditional delivery vehicles—first aircraft and later ballistic and cruise missiles. Yet, for almost as long as nuclear weapons have existed, the possibility of clandestine delivery means has also been entertained. Indeed, a 1947 fbi memo concluded that “a complete atom bomb could be smuggled into the United States as freight even though it is of large bulk, and the bomb could be detonated by remote control after it has been placed at a specific location.” Subsequent analyses considered the delivery of nuclear devices via disguised aircraft, small watercraft, and even disassembled weapons smuggled piecemeal within Soviet diplomatic pouches. Although the likelihood is vanishingly small that a state would conduct a clandestine, unacknowledged nuclear attack, more recent developments suggest that forensics programs could be oriented to account for this possibility.

The past several decades have witnessed multiple states’ use of proxy forces to commit acts of aggression, perhaps most infamously Russia’s use of unidentified “little green men” to invade Ukraine and annex the Crimean Peninsula. In other cases, pariah states have supplied non-state groups with increasingly sophisticated weaponry, such as Iran’s provision of advanced arms to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and its suspected delivery of drones, ballistic missiles, and surface-to-air missiles to Houthi rebels in Yemen. Although most analysts have concluded that nuclear-armed states would be extremely unlikely to provide nuclear capabilities to proxies, one cannot exclude this possibility altogether. Nor can the scenario be dismissed in which a hostile state’s own personnel conduct a “false flag” operation to give a nuclear detonation the appearance of a terrorist attack. The knowledge that the United States could confidently attribute the responsible government in this scenario may help to discourage consideration of such an attack.

Other potential uses of nuclear weapons in which a state might seek to deny responsibility include single- or limited-use scenarios in a regional conflict. Although little ambiguity might exist over the origin of the attack, a state’s denial of responsibility, however brazen and unconvincing, may complicate the international response. Consider the 2010 sinking of the Republic of Korea Navy corvette Cheonan in the Yellow Sea, which killed forty-six South Korean seamen. Despite significant evidence of North Korea’s guilt and the fact that no plausible party but North Korea could have been responsible, the Kim regime steadfastly denied having struck the vessel. While authorship of a nuclear attack would be considerably more difficult to disavow, scenarios are conceivable in which plausible deniability would provide just enough justification for wavering states to avoid further escalation.

Over the past two decades, the strategic literature has increasingly speculated that Russia may use low-yield nuclear weapons in a conflict as part of its purported “escalate to deescalate” doctrine. In this circumstance, one can imagine the Kremlin nonetheless claiming that a low-yield nuclear strike was in fact conventional, denying responsibility entirely, or perhaps instead blaming the United States or the United Kingdom. Profession of belief or disbelief in such a claim by Russia would break along predictable lines, potentially preventing a broad international coalition from forming to condemn the attack. Notably, the premise of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Charter—that an attack against one NATO member constitutes an attack on them all, requiring a collective response—presupposes that the agent of the attack would be known and agreed upon. What if Russia took pains to camouflage responsibility for a nuclear attack, or at least provided sufficient deniability for smaller, hesitant NATO members to absolve themselves of their collective duty? In such a scenario, the scientific ability to remove doubt about Russia’s guilt may be a significant factor in maintaining NATO’s unity.

Of course, imagining clandestine nuclear use scenarios can easily become fanciful, and the probability of such events should not be overstated. Some scholars, for example, have considered the possibility that terrorists could use nuclear weapons to precipitate a war between two nuclear-armed adversaries—a prospect in which exculpatory scientific data would be especially valuable. Nonetheless, even overly imaginative scenarios illustrate the remarkable diversity of contingencies to which nuclear forensics may be applied.

Forensics in Resolving Accidental Unattributed Nuclear Events. Although unmasking nuclear villainy certainly makes for more dramatic analysis, there are many conceivable, and arguably more likely, scenarios in which nuclear forensics may be brought to bear in response to nuclear accidents or other unattributed nuclear events, some with potentially enormous ramifications. Among the most consequential of these is the possibility of an accidental nuclear detonation, particularly in a troubled, conflict-prone region. Indeed, a 2010 study by the National Academies of Science noted that immediately following a nuclear detonation, one of the first questions leaders might ask is, “Was it ours?” However, such introspection should not be assumed in regions where one or more rival states possess nuclear weapons and are locked in a persistent state of low-grade hostility. Following an accidental nuclear detonation on the Indian subcontinent, one can easily imagine the leaders of Pakistan or India reflexively concluding that their nation was under attack and ordering nuclear retaliation. Such an event could precipitate a nuclear exchange that rapid, unambiguous scientific analysis might be able to forestall, staving off a tragedy of immense proportions.

Advanced nuclear forensic capabilities may also help strengthen international norms by fostering transparency in the aftermath of a nuclear facility accident or non-catastrophic nuclear weapon mishap. Particularly among authoritarian regimes that are sensitive to their international reputation, there are often incentives to be less than forthcoming about the extent or even the occurrence of a nuclear incident. The ability to resolve ambiguities about and assign responsibility for such events may thus encourage greater openness following an accident, as well as motivate investments in precautions to prevent mishaps from occurring to begin with. 

The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 is instructive in this regard. Fewer than two days after the reactor accident, high levels of radiation were detected on the shoes of workers at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden, some 680 miles away. Having determined that the radiation was not the result of a domestic nuclear accident, Swedish diplomats contacted Soviet officials and signaled their intention to file a report with the IAEA. This in turn forced the Soviet Union to admit to the world that a serious nuclear event had occurred. While the magnitude of the Chernobyl disaster would have made it impossible to deny for long, forensic capabilities can contribute substantially to public knowledge about less obvious nuclear incidents. 

In one such example in September 2017, the IMS detected a significant, unattributed release of the radioisotope Ruthenium-106 across central and eastern Europe and Asia. Based on weather patterns, suspicion immediately fell on Russia as the source of the release. A subsequent NNSA analysis provided to France’s Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) implicated Russia with a high probability, and IRSN’s independent analysis came to the same conclusion. In June 2020, a group of European scientists released a study purporting to demonstrate “irrefutable proof” that Russia’s Mayak nuclear facility was the source of the release, which reportedly occurred in the course of nuclear waste reprocessing. Nonetheless, Russia steadfastly denies responsibility for the incident to this day. 

Almost two years after the Ruthenium -106 release, an event known as the “Skyfall” incident occurred involving an explosion near Nenoksa, Russia, in August 2019. The United States later asserted the blast was caused by a nuclear reactor accident during the recovery of a Russian nuclear-powered cruise missile, which lay on the floor of the White Sea near a major population center since a failed 2018 missile test. Russia’s response to international inquiries about the incident was characteristically opaque and contradictory, and four nearby radiation sensor sites conveniently went offline following the explosion, suggesting an attempt at concealment. Although Russia held funerals for five technical personnel from its nuclear weapons laboratory killed in the incident, the Kremlin has to date not acknowledged the nature or seriousness of the accident.

In instances where the non-cooperation of a foreign government prevents a full investigation into nuclear accidents and mishaps, the ability to perform scientific analysis—often far from the event site—that is broadly accepted by the international community may decrease the frequency of cover-ups or other attempts at obfuscation. The wish to avoid national embarrassment may in turn encourage greater international cooperation in the realm of nuclear safety and security, such as the exchange of best practices with other nuclear states. Additionally, the accountability that forensic capabilities may facilitate could discourage irresponsible behaviors among the nuclear powers, such as Russia’s development of a nuclear-powered cruise missile that one senior U.S. official has described as a “flying Chernobyl.”

FOR NUCLEAR forensic capabilities to influence foreign state behavior more significantly, from eschewing support for would-be nuclear terrorists to improving the safety of nuclear operations, the United States must proceed along two parallel paths. The first involves continued investments in the scientific and technical infrastructure that enables forensic analysis at the national laboratories. The second concerns the conscious advertising of U.S. forensic capabilities to foreign audiences and the cultivation of broad international acceptance of these tools’ scientific integrity. Like the twin necessity of operational capability and political resolve to reinforce the credibility of traditional nuclear deterrence, these two requirements are the cornerstones of credibility where the United States’ nuclear forensics tools are concerned.

National Investments in Nuclear Forensics. In addition to the physical infrastructure needed to perform nuclear forensic analysis at the national laboratories, perhaps the most important enablers of the forensics mission are its scientific and operational personnel. Among the chief findings of a 2010 National Academies of Science study on nuclear forensics was that the men and women of the forensics workforce are “too few and are spread too thinly.” Absent dedicated funding and promising career prospects in the realm of nuclear forensics, these individuals will gravitate toward other nuclear security missions, depriving forensics of critical technical talent. This recognition has motivated a concerted U.S. government effort to recapitalize the nuclear forensics workforce and ensure that the next generation of scientists will be attracted to the forensics mission. Although these steps are promising, national laboratory leaders and members of Congress must emphasize the need for the full range of nuclear incident response personnel, including scientists trained in nuclear forensics, with the same vehemence that they advocate for skilled nuclear weapon designers and others who perform stockpile-related missions.

Additionally, nuclear forensics requires significant national investments in scientific disciplines such as trace particle analysis and particle morphology analysis to allow the United States to determine, for example, the enrichment processes that produced the nuclear material used in a terrorist nuclear device. Although a hostile state may attempt to obfuscate its responsibility for the malicious use of nuclear material, doing so requires scientific capabilities resident only in a small handful of advanced states. Sophisticated nuclear forensic tools thus raise the bar for states that might otherwise attempt to use these materials in a hostile manner and escape recrimination. Although NNSA has more than doubled its funding for nuclear forensics over the last two fiscal years, continued interagency support will be necessary to achieve the full promise of these capabilities.

Finally, the United States must establish scientific data collection methodologies that are internationally agreed upon before a nuclear incident to allow for rapid consensus on the scientific ground truth when a crisis occurs. This will require internationally accepted data authentication processes that have been practiced repeatedly and subjected to independent scrutiny—to the extent the protection of U.S. “sources and methods” will allow. Because only a few advanced countries possess these capabilities, U.S. scientific conclusions following a nuclear incident may either be poorly understood or subject to claims that the outputs are inconclusive. (An additional consideration is that the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons [npt] prohibits the recognized nuclear weapons states from sharing nuclear weapon-related information with non-nuclear weapons states and forbids the latter from receiving such information; the npt may thus prevent international scrutiny of collected data and analysis that could allow the extrapolation of nuclear weapon design information.) Consequently, the United States and its partners should educate the broader global scientific community on many of these processes and methodologies, enabling them to be repeated by others and thus foster confidence in U.S. scientific assertions following a nuclear incident. Of particular value are scientists from neutral and non-aligned countries, whose unbiased assessments following a nuclear event would be particularly valuable in buttressing U.S. conclusions and in turn adding legitimacy to the United States’ response.

Nuclear Forensics in U.S. Strategic Messaging. In Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 dark comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, much of the plot centers around the untimely revelation of a Soviet “Doomsday Machine” designed to trigger an automatic nuclear counterstrike if the United States undertook a nuclear attack. Yet, for the system to deter such aggression, the United States would have to be aware of its existence, and in the film this notification had not yet occurred. Dr. Strangelove exclaims to the Soviet ambassador, “The whole point of the Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret!” In keeping with this logic, the United States is now consciously telegraphing the existence of its sophisticated and continually improving nuclear forensic capabilities—and articulating the repercussions of facilitating nuclear terrorism. Notably, the 2018 National Strategy for Countering WMD Terrorism states that, “The expectation that the United States can reliably attribute support for WMD terrorism, coupled with clarity about the consequences of doing so, will help dissuade hostile governments and individuals from complicity in mass murder” (emphasis added). 

While foreign perceptions of the United States’ existing forensic capabilities are probably sufficient to discourage state support for nuclear terrorism even now, nothing should be left to chance. Repeated demonstrations of progress in refining nuclear forensic competencies are necessary, as is repetition of the link between adversary support for terrorists and U.S. retaliation. Yet, nuclear terrorism is not the only domain where strategic messaging on forensic tools is advisable. The United States, together with its allies and the IAEA, can affect significant improvements in global nuclear safety and security by combining technical forensic capabilities with a concerted campaign to highlight and assign blame for nuclear incidents and accidents. Even if such pressure does not succeed in influencing the most recalcitrant states’ behavior, it may nonetheless help shape the conduct of other countries, particularly rising nuclear powers eager to be recognized as responsible stewards of nuclear technology.

Finally, as U.S. adversaries continue to develop their nuclear doctrines, including consideration of clandestine or other non-traditional use contingencies, the United States must ensure that they do so mindful of U.S. capabilities to resolve unattributed nuclear events. This outcome can be achieved by expanding explicit references to nuclear forensics in U.S. declaratory policy to include the range of scenarios in which these capabilities may inform U.S. responses.

FROM THE dawn of the nuclear age, the policy debates surrounding nuclear deterrence, ballistic missiles defenses, and even commercial nuclear power have featured sharp ideological divides that persist to the present day. Nuclear forensics, by contrast, represents the rare nuclear capability that is untainted by partisanship and historical baggage. The non-ideological quality of the nuclear forensics mission should thus attract broad bipartisan support for enhancing the nation’s capabilities in this domain. 

The relative inexpensiveness of America’s nuclear forensics programs further attests to their utility. Totaling less than $100 million across the U.S. government in 2019, investments in nuclear forensics represent a genuine bargain relative to their contributions to nuclear deterrence, conflict avoidance, and international nuclear safety and security. Yet, to appreciate fully the value of these capabilities one must consider the extraordinary economic impacts of a successful act of nuclear terrorism, which can hardly be overstated. Although preventing a terrorist nuclear attack is merely one of many scenarios to which forensic tools are germane, it is undoubtedly among the most consequential.

When one considers the shock of the September 11 attacks and the loss of life, as well as the economic, political, and military repercussions that lasted well over a decade, a terrorist nuclear attack would be orders of magnitude more destructive. Indeed, one widely cited Harvard University study estimated that a single 10-kiloton nuclear device detonated in New York City could kill as many as 500,000 people. The ramifications of such an attack are simply impossible to imagine. If America’s nuclear forensic capabilities were successful in deterring even a single terrorist nuclear attack, the return on investment would likely be without parallel in the history of national security expenditures.

Jay A. Tilden serves as Associate Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Office of Counterterrorism and Counterproliferation, with responsibility for preparing for and responding to nuclear and radiological incidents worldwide. He previously served as Director of the NNSA Office of Nuclear Threat Science. Tilden is a career member of the Senior Executive Service.

Dallas Boyd is the Chief of Staff of the NNSA Office of Counterterrorism and Counterproliferation. From 2017–2018, he served as Director for Countering Nuclear Terrorism on the National Security Council staff. Boyd’s writings have appeared in the Nonproliferation Review, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Strategic Studies Quarterly, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Washington Quarterly, and Homeland Security Affairs.

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