Consortium for Verification Technology

Disarmament VerificationAregDanagoulian

MIT

Consortium for Verification Technology

NewSTARTtreaty,2011– Russia&USA

• Reducedeployedwarheadsto1550warheadseach-- ~3xreduction

• Howdotreatypartnersverifythattheothersideisdismantlingactualwarheadsandnotfakes?Theydon’t.

• Verification:deliveryvehicles – easier toverify.

• Problems:largeleftoverofnon-deployedwarheads• theftà nuclearterrorism,nuclearproliferation• rapidrearmamentintimesofpoliticalcrisis

à Authenticatewarheads,withoutrevealingclassifiedinformation!

Consortium for Verification Technology

Overall View of Thrust Area

• Treaty verification is not the same as weapon detection

• The goal of verification is to confirm that an object presented as “X” is “X”.– Negotiate protocols to establish acceptable level for

“confirmation.” • Critical Issues:

– clear all real warheads (completeness)– detect all fakes/hoaxes (soundness)– reveal no classified information (“zero knowledge”)

Consortium for Verification Technology

Thrust Area V Subprograms• VerificationUsingInherentlyTrustworthyInstruments(Univ.ofMichigan)

– SARADC’swithnon-uniformbinresolution– Lead:DavidWehe– Student:FredBuhler– Collaboratingwith:LLNL

• AutomatedUraniumEnrichmentMeasurements(UIUC)– Lead:KatyHuff– Student:MarkKamuda– Collaboratingwith:DAF

• ZeroKnowledgetemplateverification(Princeton+Yale)– neutronradiographyà comparisontoatemplate– Leads:AlexGlaser,Francescod’Errico,RobertGoldston.– Student:SebastianPhilippe,MikeHepler– Collaboratingwith:PPPL,DAF

• PhysicalCryptographicVerificationofNuclearWarheads(MIT)– transmissionNRFtoproduceaphysicalhashofanuclearwarheadà comparisontoatemplate– Leads:AregDanagoulian– Students:JaysonVavrek,Ruaridh Macdonald,EllieImmerman,BobbyNelson,JakeHecla– Collaboratingwith:PNNL

Consortium for Verification Technology

Three core components:• First stage secure SAR for generating windows (6-bits). • Residue (error) amplifier• Second stage SAR for fine measurement within window (8-bits)

Untrusted ObserverLearns Nothing

SAR1

++

-SAR2

SecureMeasurementUnit(SMU)forTreatyVerification [UMich,Wehe]

Consortium for Verification Technology

Consortium for Verification Technology

Automated Uranium Enrichment Measurements with NaIUsing an Artificial Neural Network (ANN)

7

Twoorder-reductiontechniqueswerecomparedtousingthefullspectrumasthefirstneuralnetworklayer.

Usingthefullspectrumtooklongertotrainthanthetwoorderreductiontechniques,butachievedasimilarfinalerroronasimulatedvalidationdataset.

Despitethegoodperformanceonthevalidationset,theneuralnetworkperformedpoorlyonrealHEUspectra.

Fig.2:Gamma-rayspectrumofHEU.Collectedwith2x2in.NaIin30seconds.(Kamuda,2017)

Isotope

UnattenuatedGamma-rayIntensitiesfor

HEU[%]

Input:fullspectrum[%]

Input:10Autoencoder

nodes[%]

Input:First10principalcomponents

[%]

U235 36.8 25.6+/- 0.013 14.9+/- 0.003 18.2+/- 0.004

U234 44.0 18.1+/- 0.015 15.3+/- 0.004 14.3+/- 0.002

Th231 19.0 13.8+/- 0.004 13.8+/- 0.001 14.5+/- 0.003

Others <0.2 42.5 56.0 53.0

Average neural network output from 10 HEU spectra. Different orderreduction techniques are compared. An example spectrum is shown below.

Fig. 1: Training error curves for the three neural networks taughtin this work. Note, despite taking longer to reduce the error, thefull spectrum neural network performed similarly to both orderreduction techniques. (Kamuda, 2017)

[UIUC]

Consortium for Verification Technology

8

MAKING SUB-MeV NEUTRONS

Goal: Design a moderator configuration that maximizes fraction of neutrons with energies < 1 MeV to selectively drive fission events (e.g. in U-235 vs U-238) and detect these with shielded side detectors and provide isotopic sensitivity

MODERATED DT SOURCE

RESULTS

In preparation of experimental campaign at PPPL, can different configurations of (20%-enriched and depleted) uranium cubes be distinguished?

Source: Authors

FROM A MODERATED 14-MeV DT GENERATOR

Talk by CVT Fellow Mike Hepler, coming up

[Princeton]

Consortium for Verification Technology

[MeV]Eenergy 2.1 2.12 2.14 2.16 2.18 2.2 2.22 2.24 2.26 2.28

s (liv

e)

⋅A

µin

terp

. co

unts

per

1.0

0 k

eV

per

0

0.002

0.004

0.006

0.008

0.01

0.012

0.014template (DU) spectrum

hoax (Pb) spectrum

template (DU) fit

hoax (Pb) fit

σdiscrepancy = 10.69

Verification Concepts with tNRF[MIT]

-- hoax-- template

• HighVoltageResearchLab– 2.5MeVbeam• Twoproxydevices:fulldiversion,halfdiversion

• 5-11s detection• Clearhonestdevice

• staytuned(arxiv)– submittinganarticlesoon

Otherprojects:• ZeroKnowledgeepithermal

radiography• nucleararchaeology• historyofverification(poster)

Consortium for Verification Technology

10

INSTRUMENTS:algorithms (UIUC)

detectors (Yale)electronics (UM)

VERIFICATION CONCEPTS:NRF (MIT)

Neutrons (Princeton)

NATIONALLABS

DISARMAMENT VERIFICATION

Consortium for Verification Technology

Conclusion• Solidprogressonallprojects:

– isotopicsensitivityusing<MeVneutronsources(Princeton)– experimentaldataofwarheadverificationusingtNRF (MIT),newverification

conceptsusingepithermalneutrons– Uraniumenrichmen usingneuralnetworks(Illinois)– New,non-uniformADCforinformationsecurity:prototypeready(UM)