Preliminary Investigation for the Development of Surrogate Debris from Nuclear Detonations in Marine-Urban Environments

No nuclear weapon has ever been detonated in a United States city. However, this also means the nuclear forensic community has no actual debris from which to develop analytical methods for source attribution, making the development of surrogate nuclear debris a vital undertaking. Moreover, the development of marine-urban debris presents an unusual challenge because unlike soil and urban structures, which remain compositionally consistent, the elemental composition of harbor and port waters fluctuates considerably due to natural phenomenon and human activity. Additionally, marine vessel composition and cargo can vary dramatically. While early US nuclear tests were carried out in shallow-water coastal areas, they did not represent the marine-urban environments of large cities and any residual debris will be ill suited for the development of modern forensic techniques. Given these technical complexities, it is critical to understand the environmental variations in order to develop realistic surrogate nuclear marine-urban debris. This project seeks to build a robust model for the New York/New Jersey harbor, the Port of Houston, and the Long Beach/Los Angeles harbor that statistically define the elemental composition of vaporized debris for follow-on neutron-activation and debris formation analysis. Analysis of these neutron and fractionation effects will support the development of unique surrogate debris samples that mimic the elemental content of actual nuclear debris from a marin-eurban detonation. These samples can then be utilized for the development of the analytical methods for post-detonation analysis and attribution.