Forensics Team Leader Investigates European Nuclear Materials of Unknown Origin

WHEN A FORMER drug dealer notified police in the small German town of Lauenförde that he no longer wanted the 14 uranium pellets long hidden in his garden, Klaus Mayer got a phone call. Mayer is head of nuclear forensics at the European Commission's Institute for Transuranium Elements (ITU), which does the detective work when nuclear material mysteriously appears across the country and, often, across the continent. Located in Karlsruhe, Germany, ITU is one of a handful of organizations around the world¿another one is Lawrence Livermore National Lab, in California¿that specializes in nuclear forensics, a field of research that bloomed in the 1990s, when tight control of nuclear material in states of the former Soviet Union disintegrated.

MAYER Klaus;  EVERTS S.; 

2009-02-12

AMER CHEMICAL SOC

JRC50416

0009-2347,   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC50416,