Year
2006
Abstract
A central question in the nonproliferation regime is whether cheating can be detected. This paper reviews wide area environmental sampling technology to determine whether it can be a solution to the problem of monitoring for covert proliferation. Unfortunately, given current technical capabilities wide area environmental sampling cannot reliably detect significant quantities levels of covert enrichment or reprocessing, without either an extremely dense network of sampling stations, which would be cost prohibitive and politically infeasible, or prior information about the location of a suspected site. In addition, covert proliferators can take measures that further reduce the chance their activities will be detected. Policy questions created by this constraint are then raised.