The first university group permitted to take measurements at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) near Las Vegas included two of NPRE Assistant Prof. Clair Sullivan’s graduate students.
Mark Kamuda and Jacob Stinnett work with Sullivan in radiation detection research. The students were invited to the high-security facility because Sullivan’s investigations are pivotal in two U.S. Department of Energy-funded initiatives: the Consortium for Verification Technology (CVT) and the Consortium for Nonproliferation Enabling Capabilities (CNEC). CVT’s purpose is to conduct research and development in nuclear arms control verification technologies, including nuclear safeguards effectiveness. CNEC will provide the U.S. government with cutting edge research and development to identify and address multi-disciplinary and cross-functional technology and detect foreign nuclear weapon proliferation activities.
Stinnett develops software for detectors used in emergency first response and border crossing checks, and for treaty verification at nuclear plants around the world. Kamuda creates algorithms for isotope identification after a nuclear detonation.
The visit to NNSS enabled Stinnett and Kamuda to test their software on weapons-grade plutonium and highly enriched uranium, materials unavailable to them in a university setting.
The two students trained at Los Alamos in April to prepare for the four-day journey this past summer to NNSS. They worked in the site’s Device Assembly Facility. “It was an enormous concrete and steel structure designed so that if something explodes, it stays within the contained area,” Kamuda said. “It had very thick steel doors.”
Dressed in full-length pants, hard-toed shoes and eyeglasses, Stinnett and Kamuda were equipped with thermoluminescent dosimeters (TLD), to measure the radiation dose each of them were getting, and personal nuclear accident dosimeters, in case an accident were to destroy the TLDs.
Although neither student was allowed to touch most of the sources they measured, they did get to handle and be photographed with the famous BeRP (Beryllium-Reflected Plutonium) ball, a sphere composed of weapons-grade plutonium. The ball has been the source of many scientific investigations and papers.
“When I showed the BeRP picture to my parents, they said, ‘You’re holding it. Why are you holding it?’” Stinnett said. He assured his parents he was in no danger.
The facility and the power nuclear weapons can exude impressed the students. In particular, the Sedan Crater, a famous underground testing spot near Groom Lake, Nevada, made an impact when Kamuda and Stinnett toured the site during their visit. The result of a nuclear test in 1962, the Sedan Crater is 300 feet deep and a quarter of a mile in diameter. It can be seen from earth orbit with the unaided eye.
“Seeing the crater itself was very surreal,” Kamuda said. “It was a fairly small nuclear explosion, and to have this enormous hole result underground; it moved 11 million tons of earth.
“We were seeing the power of what this has,” he continued. “ We went with a group and no one said anything for a few minutes; we just stared at it.”
Preventing the use of such power for harmful purposes is the objective behind the work Stinnett and Kamuda do. “Keeping someone (dangerous) from making nuclear material is the main thing,” Kamuda said.