Detecting Clandestine Reprocessing Activities in the Middle East

Remote monitoring of krypton-85 from undeclared reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel could be part of a fissile material cut-off treaty, could serve as an additional measure for the IAEA safeguards system to monitor compliance with the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty, and could be an important verification tool of a reprocessing moratorium or Nuclear Weapon Free Zone in the Middle East or East Asia. Atmospheric transport modelling is applied to determine the area over which krypton-85 emissions from undeclared reprocessing activities at various levels in the Middle East would still be detectable against the high krypton-85 background from reprocessing in historical weapon programs in the United States and USSR as well as more recent and ongoing commercial reprocessing in France and the U.K. Analysis of annual wind flow over Israel's Dimona facility, the only operating reprocessing site in the region, suggests that a known reprocessing plant could be monitored with one or a few fixed monitoring stations. Random air sampling for krypton-85 analysis, perhaps using drones, may be feasible for reliable and timely detection of clandestine reprocessing plants against the krypton-85 background but would require on the order of 50–100 air samples per day. Ending reprocessing at La Hague in France and at Sellafield in the UK and the resulting decline of the krypton-85 background over time would reduce to about 10 the number of daily samples required to monitor the Middle East.     

Note: A local-search heuristic for large set-covering problems

In this note we describe a local-search heuristic (LSH) for large non-unicost set-covering problems (SCPs). The new heuristic is based on the simulated annealing algorithm and uses an improvement routine designed to provide low-cost solutions within a reasonable amount of CPU time. The solution costs associated with the LSH compared very favorably to the best previously published solution costs for 20 large SCPs taken from the literature. In particular, the LSH yielded new benchmark solutions for 17 of the 20 test problems. We also report that, for SCPs where column cost is correlated with column coverage, the new heuristic provides solution costs competitive with previously published results for comparable problems. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Optimal shift scheduling: A branch‐and‐price approach

We present a branch‐and‐price technique for optimal staff scheduling with multiple rest breaks, meal break, and break windows. We devise and implement specialized branching rules suitable for solving the set covering type formulation implicitly, using column generation. Our methodology is more widely applicable and computationally superior to the alternative methods in the literature. We tested our methodology on 365 test problems involving between 1728 and 86400 shift variations, and 20 demand patterns. In a direct comparison with an alternative method, our approach yields significant improvements both in cpu time and in the number of problem instances solved to optimality. The improvements were particularly marked for problems involving larger numbers of feasible shifts. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 47: 185–200, 2000     

A usable past: a contemporary approach to history for the Western profession of arms

The most effective way for the Western profession of arms to use history is to disavow the purism and narrow specialisation of today’s academia in favour of developing a contemporary approach to the subject. The latter aims to foster a range of applied diagnostic skills that transcend the temporal dimensions of past, present, and future. A contemporary approach to history for military professionals emphasises the use of inter-disciplinary war studies to enhance policy relevance. In any defense and security organisation, history must be usable in the sense of providing cognitive and interpretative skills for probing relationships between possibility and actuality, between experience and expectation, and between singularity and repetition. Using history to examine such dialectical interconnections is particularly valuable when military establishments confront their essential task of analyzing emerging trends in the future of war.     

IF YOU WANT IT DONE RIGHT,DO IT YOURSELF

Some have argued that the transatlantic rancor over the Iraq war made cooperation, especially on nonproliferation, unlikely. In contrast, this article, documents post-invasion instances of nonproliferation cooperation, with particular emphasis on the Proliferation Security Initiative and the EU-3 Initiative—the British, French, and German negotiations with Iran over its suspected nuclear activities. In addition to documenting French and British participation in these initiatives, the article analyzes why they have chosen to participate and argues that France and Britain have participated in both efforts because they are committed to avoiding future Iraq-like preventive wars.     

NUCLEAR ATTRIBUTION AS DETERRENCE

Recently, post-explosion nuclear forensics, or nuclear attribution, has gained a new spotlight within the nuclear weapons scientific and policymaking community. Academics are beginning to ask whether post-explosion forensics might create a replacement for an international nonproliferation regime, or at least offer a fallback option to deter states and individuals from selling nuclear materials. This paper examines current attribution technology from unclassified literature and finds the technology to be well developed but not foolproof, such that nuclear attribution currently provides little deterrent value. If current capabilities were publicized more thoroughly and if the post-explosion process of assessing the evidence were internationalized, states and intermediate actors might be deterred more effectively. Developing a nuclear fingerprint database is also discussed. While useful, its impact on deterrence would be minimal.     

Ricochet quantification using a multiple sensor approach

This study investigates the ricochet behaviour of three different small-arms projectile types using a novel ricochet measuring device.The results can be used to estimate the danger potential of ricochets on shooting ranges.A ricochet is the change of direction and velocity of a projectile after impacting an oblique surface.This impact produces strong vibrations on a rigid plate.During this impact,flexural waves travel radially outwards from the point of impact.These waves are used to determine the properties of the impactor with accelerometers situated on the target surface.With the use of two measurement plates,one can produce a ricochet and detect the velocity at the same time.Accelerometers are suitable for accurate momentum measurements of single impacts.However,depending upon strike velocity and the impact angle,a ricochet can separate in multiple fragments after being deflected.From the operational safety perspective,these fragments need to be detected,as well.The approach of a coupled sensor concept was chosen to solve this problem.Thermographic sensors were additionally used to visualise the heat which is produced after pene-trating a rubber layer pasted in front of the steel target plate.With this approach one was able to detect the position of impact.The investigations showed that the measurement system performance is better with a multiple sensor design,which includes accelerometers for the velocity,impact strength and partly the position measurement,while the thermographic sensor was used for the position measurement and partly the momentum measurement.The investigated ammunition showed plausible fragmentation behaviour,and the results can already be used to estimate the danger potential of different ammunition types.Frangible projectiles fragment to small particles already after being deflected under a small angle.However,Full Metal Jacket projectiles with or without a steel core do not fragment under angles which are less than 5°.The objective of the paper is to demonstrate the possibility of measuring the complex ricochet me-chanics of small projectiles using standard accelerometers with the adequate signal processing approach.This measuring system is supported by an off the shelf thermographic camera.