Areg Danagoulian Joins LNSP

Peter Dunn | Nuclear Science and Engineering

From early in its development, the nuclear community has emphasized the need for a “culture of safety.” Today, with an increasing range of potential nuclear threats, there is growing emphasis on a “culture of security”—and MIT NSE has augmented its presence in this area by appointing Assistant Professor Areg Danagoulian to contribute to its security-related technology research.

Danagoulian will collaborate with Assistant Professor Scott Kemp, a specialist in nuclear technology policy, and other NSE and Physics faculty and scientists in the newly formed Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy, which studies technology-policy interactions in nonproliferation, arms control, materials security, and verification. He will also co-teach class 22.09, Principles of Nuclear Radiation Measurement and Protection and 22.071, Electronics, Signals, and Measurement.

“The great thing about this department is that you have technologists like me working in close multidisciplinary collaborations with policy researchers and information theorists,” says Danagoulian, who earned an SB in Physics from MIT and a PhD in Experimental Nuclear Physics from the University of Illinois. “That’s ultimately what’s needed to solve these problems—policy research driving technological development, and vice versa, technological progress that shapes policy.”

Danagoulian worked as a post-doctoral research associate at Los Alamos National Laboratory before a five-year stint as senior scientist at Passport Systems Inc., a Billerica, Mass., developer of technologies for detecting nuclear weapons and materials hidden inside shielded cargoes.

“It’s a difficult but important task,” he notes. “If an organization has the intellectual capacity to obtain and smuggle a weapon, they’ll know how to shield it.” That’s the driver behind one of Danagoulian’s main research thrusts—a program funded by the Department of Homeland Security that will develop shield-penetrating particle beams for active scanning of freight containers, trucks, and other cargo carriers.

When a beam of “interrogating particles” is sent into the container, “it excites the hidden materials, and triggers processes in fissionable material,” explains Danagoulian. “That generates emissions unique to those materials—fast neutrons, and characteristic gamma rays for isotopes of uranium or plutonium.”

Existing beam technologies are relatively inexpensive, but inefficient because they emit at a wide range of energy levels, only a fraction of which are useful. Danagoulian’s post-doc and student researchers will seek a monochromatic beam source that emits at a fixed energy level. This would make the process faster and more effective, and slash the radiation dose—an important consideration for many reasons, including risk to electronic devices, and to stowaways who sometimes secret themselves in cargo containers.

Related work will explore tunable beam sources that can change the energy of interrogating beams to detect specific isotopes and materials, and new combinations of electronics and light-detecting materials for better detection devices.

Danagoulian’s other major line of research (funded by the Department of Energy and also involving Senior Research Scientist Richard Lanza) will address another challenging topic—compliance with international disarmament treaties that require verifiable destruction of nuclear weapons.

“Inspectors would be limited to eyeballing weapons earmarked for elimination,” Danagoulian says. “They can’t look inside, or gather spectral or nuclear data, because the other side doesn’t want them to extract highly secret information, but they need some way of ascertaining that the weapons aren’t fakes.”

The approach being pursued, called ‘zero knowledge detection’, will develop methods of ascertaining authenticity through comparison to a known weapon—creating, in effect, a comparator that can tell whether two devices are identical without revealing anything about them, perhaps through measurement of nuclear resonance fluorescence. There will be heavy student involvement in this research, with participants learning to utilize simulation, build proof-of-concept systems, and conduct data analysis en route to a working system.

Ultimately, notes Danagoulian, verifiable destruction could not only help larger countries, but also provide regional nuclear powers, like India and Pakistan, with incentives to reduce or even eliminate their arsenals.

More broadly, he says, nuclear security is a matter of risk reduction. “We can never bring the risk to zero, but can we reduce it by a factor of 10, or 100? I find it fascinating, and intellectually stimulating—and I really wanted to work on something meaningful, that would improve society and make the world safer for my children.”

LNSP's Kemp on Rethinking Nuclear Nonproliferation

In a major new article published this week in International Security, MIT Professor R. Scott Kemp argues the barriers to nuclear weapons are no longer technological.

Peter Dizikes | MIT News Office

What is the best way to prevent countries from acquiring nuclear weapons? The vast majority of nonproliferation efforts attempt to control access to sensitive technologies. However, a new study by Scott Kemp, an assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, suggests that this approach might not be working. In an article published tomorrow in the journal International Security, Kemp examines the history of the most common proliferation technology—the gas centrifuge, used to extract a weapon-suitable isotope of uranium from a larger supply of that element—and finds that existing nonproliferation policies would not have stopped historical instances of its development. Kemp, a former science advisor for nonproliferation in the U.S. State Department, argues that governments need to reinvent how they look at nuclear proliferation in the modern age, turning their attention to the security threats and status symbols that motivate states to seek nuclear weapons in the first place. He talked with MIT News recently.

Iran's former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inspects a carbon-fiber centrifuge rotor made possible by increasing globalization of previously sophisticated technologies. Photo: president.ir

Q. Why should nuclear nonproliferation efforts no longer focus on the technological hurdles to weapons production?

A. The study looks primarily at the gas centrifuge, which has become the proliferation technology of choice. We studied the history of 21 centrifuge programs; interviewed program technical directors from nearly a dozen nations, including Pakistan and Iran; and studied the technology requirements behind the centrifuge itself. We concluded that while technology was once a barrier, that barrier slowly disappeared in the 1970s and 1980s, and today there is really no way to stop countries from producing centrifuges suitable for making nuclear weapons.

This is a very different conclusion than the premise upon which the United States built its nonproliferation policies back in the 1950s. The engineering and manufacturing tools needed for proliferation were state of the art back then, but modern technology has moved well beyond those requirements, and what was once difficult is now surprisingly easy.

There is still a hard part, however: States must know how to run a research and development program. History shows one or two instances—namely Libya, and possibly Iraq—where the state seems to have been limited by its internal political, bureaucratic, and cultural institutions. These will remain important barriers for a small subset of future proliferators, and in this respect technology barriers can help exacerbate those internal limitations.

Q. What kind of approach to nonproliferation do you recommend?

A. My conclusion is that we need to get past the idea that we can control the destiny of nations by regulating access to technology. International security must ultimately resort to the difficult business of politics. To the extent that states seek nuclear weapons because of security threats, we will have to work to mitigate those threats.

Then there are also examples in history where states were motivated to acquire nuclear weapons because of their symbolism and status. This situation is more difficult. We will have to consider the possibility of strengthening normative barriers to the acquisition of nuclear weapons: in other words, establishing social factors that increase the chances a leader will be vilified, instead of worshipped, for seeking nuclear weapons.

Fortunately, there is useful precedence for normative barriers in the areas of biological and chemical weapons. While a very small number of dictators have built chemical weapons in the past, these states were universally shunned by the international community and ultimately suffered regime collapse, leaving few states interested in attempting a repeat. It should be possible to build a similar normative barrier for nuclear weapons as well, although it will take time and a serious look at the utility of our own nuclear arsenal.

Q. Your article lists more than a dozen countries that developed centrifuge technology independently. Many of them, such as Italy and Sweden, never took the further step of building nuclear weapons. Why have some countries stopped short of building actual weapons?

A. In fact, most countries have stopped short. They seem to be satisfied having only the capability to build nuclear weapons, just in case they need them at a future time. However, even though these states are weapon-capable, this situation is highly preferable to one in which states possess nuclear arsenals under active military control.

The self-restraint of states is perhaps best explained by the character of modern international relations. Many countries enjoy strong economic and security ties with nonproliferation advocates, like the United States. Faced with the decision of acquiring a nuclear weapon, especially absent of any real security threat, versus enjoying strong economic and political ties with the international community, most states likely judge the latter to be more attractive.

Norms play a role, too. The international community universally condemned nuclear weapons at the end of World War II. Most people don't remember this, but the first United Nations General Assembly Resolution called for the abolition of all nuclear weapons. Nearly all nations have further codified their willingness to forgo or abolish weapons by signing the Nonproliferation Treaty of 1970, and many continue to believe that forgoing nuclear weapons is an important element of responsible global citizenship.

The difficult cases are those states that have limited relationships with the international community, like North Korea; the pariah states that feel they have made enemies of the superpowers, like Iran; and states for which their existence is at stake. The U.S. facilitation of the Arab Spring rebellions, and the situation in the Ukraine, are examples of extremely worrisome events that could encourage states to rethink the value of nuclear weapons. If we want to avoid a highly proliferated world—one where devastating nuclear war might break out and possibly result in a global environmental catastrophe for us all—then in my view the United States will have to be more sensitive to these political dynamics. Half-century-old technology controls cannot possibly hold up forever.

LNSP's Lanza Receives $5M for Monoenergetic Cargo Inspection

A research collaboration led by LNSP's Richard Lanza has received a five-year, $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation and the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office of the Department of Homeland Security to study new approaches to the detection of shielded nuclear material.

The approach proposed by MIT involves a new method for inspecting cargo using monoenergetic gamma rays which can penetrate materials and can clearly differentiate between ordinary materials and special nuclear materials (SNM) such as uranium, while reducing the radiation dose by a factor of 20 relative to previous approaches. The new system will combine a unique radiation source with new concepts in detectors and new approaches to inference and data analysis algorithms that can clearly delineate between potential threats and benign materials using both statistical inferences and physics-based simulations.

The overarching goal of the project is to develop a novel approach to the active detection of shielded nuclear materials while in transit with an easily relocatable low-dose system. The system approach will be such that a fast screen can be made to rapidly clear the vast majority of objects which pose no threat and, if a potential threat is detected, to use the same system to positively identify the presence of nuclear materials. The MIT team includes scientists from NSE (Richard Lanza, overall project PI) and CSAIL (John Fisher), as well as collaborators from Penn State (Igor Jovanovic, Zoubeida Ounaies) and Georgia Tech (Anna Erickson).

New Study Finds North Korea Has Indigenous Capabilities to Produce Nuclear Weapons

David L. Chandler | MIT News Office

An example of the open-source evidence used for Kemp's study: A 2011 image from a television broadcast in North Korea showing Kim-Jong Il inspecting a flow-forming machine located in an underground tunnel. This type of machine is able to produce centrifuge rotors for North Korea's uranium-enrichment program.

For years now, the chief strategy for curtailing North Korea’s ability to build more nuclear weapons has entailed attempts to block access to critical technologies needed by its nuclear program. But R. Scott Kemp, an assistant professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT and director of its recently formed Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy, has found evidence—by combing through publicly available sources—that the secretive state may have managed an end-run around those restrictions, enabling it to build centrifuges and other equipment needed to produce weapons-grade uranium. The findings were presented this week at a conference in South Korea by Kemp’s collaborator on the project, Joshua Pollack, a Washington-based security consultant. MIT News asked Kemp about how the new study was conducted and the significance of its findings.

Q. Can you describe the methodology you used to find out about these possible developments in North Korea’s nuclear capabilities?

A. One first needs a strong nuclear-engineering understanding of the technologies required to build a nuclear-weapons program from scratch. Equipped with this knowledge, it is then possible to perform a close analysis of open-source technical materials, such as journal articles, research reports and patents, to search for evidence of nuclear-weapon-enabling activities. An example would be modifications to a steel-making factory to produce a very particular grade of ultra-high-strength steel, or the development of control electronics for spinning centrifuges at speeds of 400 to 500 meters-per-second peripheral velocity. Individually, no one finding is significant, but a large number of time- and functionally correlated activities paints a picture of an emerging capability.

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An illustration from an open North Korean technical journal showing the computation for balancing a uranium-enriching centrifuge rotor. The article was published 1989, 21 years before the North Korean enrichment program was revealed to the public. 

Searching for these bits of evidence is just as challenging as the technical interpretation of activities. The total volume of these materials is enormous, they are written in an archaic version of Korean used only in North Korea, and they are difficult to come by. Finding an effective filter is key. To reduce the burden of endless searching, we analyzed political materials such as propaganda, leadership travel schedules, and official commendations given to workers by the state. By observing where the North Korean government focuses its interests, we are able to narrow down on a handful of facilities and industrial activities from among many thousands, selecting associated technical reports for further analysis. We are now exploring the possibility of using Bayesian nonparametric classification and multimodal data fusion to automate this search process.

Q. How much certainty can one ascribe to these conclusions, and assuming they are correct, what are the implications in terms of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal?

A. We can only say that our findings suggest an increasing independence of the North Korean nuclear-weapons program in contrast to its earlier structure, which relied heavily on foreign technologies. In some cases we have established that North Korea is able to carry out a small subset of critical industrial activities at a scale significant enough to expand the nuclear program at a rapid rate, while other findings merely suggest achievements at the R&D level, but we lack evidence indicating whether these achievements have been industrialized.

However, our mission is not to draw firm conclusions about the precise state of affairs in North Korea. Rather, our goal is to understand how the country is organizing its strategic programs and how the United States might need to adjust its policies to improve the chances of reducing the North Korean nuclear-weapons threat. Historically, policymakers in the United States have presumed that North Korea was locked in the proverbial Stone Age, unable to organize indigenous research into advanced areas of engineering. U.S. intelligence was therefore largely predicated on counting the observed imports by North Korea, and our government’s efforts to slow the program were focused mostly on stopping the flow of tools and materials into North Korea rather than on diplomacy and engagement.

Our findings suggest a course correction may be necessary. Fewer imports means the intelligence agencies will be less able to gauge accurately the rate at which North Korea's program is expanding, and independence from foreign suppliers suggests that we may need to prepare ourselves to sit down and negotiate a peaceful and stable outcome to this 60-year-old standoff or risk facing a thoroughly nuclear-armed North Korea.

Q. What is the new Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy, and how does this research project fit in with the center’s plans and processes?

A. The mission of the Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy is to promote peace and stability in the use of nuclear energy by bringing advanced tools to bear on some of the most challenging nuclear-security problems. Much of what we do is focused on eliminating the risks posed by nuclear weapons, whether that be accidental or unauthorized use of existing weapons, the elimination of the extensive stocks of surplus nuclear weapons left over from Cold War arsenals, or preventing the spread of weapons to new countries. Our North Korea project is a typical example of how we use science to identify the boundary conditions of a policy problem, which we then translate into a family of solutions that take the form of policy recommendations. We also work to develop new technologies and tools to enable peace-promoting treaties by working to solve longstanding challenges associated with treaty verification. The most revolutionary results come when we are able to fuse cutting-edge technology by collaborating with scholars from across the many technical disciplines represented at MIT. This makes MIT a very exciting place to do this kind of research, and it’s nice to know that it helps make the world a better place too.

Press Coverage

• Choe Sang-Hun, "North Korea Learning to Make Crucial Nuclear Parts, Study Finds," The New York Times, September 23, 2013.
• "US experts: North Korean scientists are mastering domestic production of key nuke components", The Washington Post, September 24, 2013.
• Alastair Gale, "Study Sees North Korean Advances on Uranium Enrichment," The Wall Street Journal, September 23, 2013.