A new method that borrows from strategies used in computer cryptography could verify the presence of nuclear warheads without collecting classified information. The technique fires high-energy neutrons at a non-nuclear target (pictured above), called a British Test Object, that will serve as a proxy for warheads. (Photo by Elle Starkman)
SCIENTISTS at Princeton University and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) are developing a system to verify the presence of nuclear warheads without collecting classified information, as a step toward the further reduction of nuclear arms.
While efforts have been made to develop systems for verifying the content of warheads covered by disarmament treaties, no such methods are currently in use. The new method borrows from strategies used in computer cryptography to identify nuclear warheads while learning nothing about the materials and design of the warheads themselves.
The research was published in the June 26, 2014, issue of Nature and was conducted by Alexander Glaser, an assistant professor in Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering; Robert Goldston, former director of PPPL, a fusion researcher and a professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton; and Boaz Barak, a senior researcher at Microsoft New England who has taught computer science at Princeton.
–By John Greenwald
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