Gas-phase detection of solid-state fission product complexes for post-detonation nuclear forensic analysis

Gas-phase detection of solid-state fission product complexes for post-detonation nuclear forensic analysis

This study presents the first known detection of fission products commonly found in post-detonation nuclear debris samples using solid sample introduction and a uniquely coupled gas chromatography inductively-coupled plasma time-of-flight mass spectrometer. Rare earth oxides were chemically altered to incorporate a ligand that enhances the volatility of the samples. These samples were injected ...

A Method for Determining Material Attributes from Post- Detonation Fission Product Measurements of an Heu Device

An algorithm was developed that uses measured isotopic ratios from fission product residue following the detonation of a nuclear weapon to compute the original attributes of the nuclear material used in the weapon. While more accurate (and more computationally intensive) methods are being explored by others, the method described here could serve as a preprocessing step to a more detailed method...

Numerical Simulation of Gas-phase Detonation Transmission

Simulation of Detonation Propagation in Turbulent Gas-Solid Reactive Mixtures

The present study focuses on the simulation of highly reactive two-phase flows associated with detonations. A hybrid scheme, that combines a high-order shock-capturing method and a second/fourth-order accurate, low dissipation scheme is first validated by simulating blast wave discharges and shock-vortex interaction. The Large-Eddy Simulation model used in the present formulation is considered ...

Liquid-Gas Phase Transition in Nuclear Equation of State

A canonical ensemble model is used to describe a caloric curve of nuclear liquid-gas phase transition. Allowing a discontinuity in the freeze out density from one spinodal density to another for a given initial temperature, the nuclear liquid-gas phase transition can be described as first order. Averaging over various freeze out densities of all the possible initial temperatures for a given tot...