ABSTRACT

The Manhattan Project, effected by the United States during World War II, forever changed the technical, social, and political framework of the world. The endeavor produced a nuclear industry with several diverse facets, with the principal ones today being weapons, power, and medicine. The focus of this book is on the science, techniques, and analyses of nuclear materials and their near environments for information pertinent to nuclear incident investigations by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The main applications of such forensic analyses are in instances of nuclear smuggling, nuclear terrorism, nuclear extortion, and nuclear arms proliferation. To those ends, the weapons and power aspects of the nuclear revolution are the most important areas for consideration.