Dr. Eliel Villa-Aleman
Advisory Scientist
Savannah River National Laboratory

Abstract

Diversion of nuclear materials from legitimate commercial processes for use by nefarious actors is a frightening and surreptitious problem. Smuggled nuclear material can be used to manufacture a simple  radiological dispersion device (RDD) and potentially incorporated into the development of a nuclear  weapon. With some frequency, smuggled nuclear material is interdicted in foreign countries as actors  cross border checkpoints. Nuclear material interdicted in this way can be analyzed in the United States  through collaborative effort between the country of the interdicted material and the US government. In  the US, different government agencies (Department of State (DoS), Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI)  and the Department of Energy (DOE)) work together to facilitate the collaboration, share intelligence, and disseminate results of the analyses.  

Within the DOE, advances in nuclear forensics capabilities are supported by the National Nuclear Security  Administration. This continued support allows the capabilities of the US government to expand and has  resulted in the discovery of new and different signatures within nuclear materials. As such, interdicted  nuclear materials are often shipped to DOE laboratories wherein nuclear forensics specialists attempt to  determine:  

1) What is the elemental/isotopic composition of the material?  

2) What is the chemical compound?  

3) Where was the material manufactured?  

4) How was it produced?  

5) How long ago was the material manufactured?  

6) In the event of two interdicted materials, are the materials different or did they originate  from a single source?  

Plutonium-239 is commonly used as the fissile material in nuclear weapon production (as an alternative  to uranium-235). Plutonium in a production, refining, or finishing facility will exist in many forms including  oxide precursors (PuF4, PuF3, Pu oxalate, etc.), oxide, and metal. The ability to identify plutonium in each  of these forms and determine properties, characteristics, or history of these materials is crucial for  determining if the processes occurring in a nuclear facility are legitimate or not. This presentation will  focus on how vibrational spectroscopy techniques(Raman and IR) in conjunction with other analyses such  as XRD and SEM can be used to provide advanced details about nuclear material processing history.

Biography

Dr. Eliel Villa-Aleman is a native from San Juan, Puerto Rico. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from the University of Puerto Rico (Rio Piedras Campus) in 1979 and his PhD from Wayne State University in Physical Chemistry (laser spectroscopy) in 1987. At Wayne State University, he published several papers in the photoionization and phosphorescence detection of single-triplet transitions in supersonic jets. In 1987, he joined the Naval Research Laboratory as a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow. At NRL, he conducted research and published work on the decomposition of In(CH3)3 and Ga(CH3)3 for semiconductor production and nanodiamond formation from pyrolytic decomposition of methane gas.

Dr. Villa-Aleman joined SRNL in 1990 where his research focused on many different research topics. Dr.  Villa-Aleman participated and worked on numerous projects which include airborne and satellite remote  sensing of materials, spectroscopy of uranium and plutonium-bearing compounds, imaging in the UV-VIS NIR-IR, electrostatic particle collector design, material collection and analysis from the detonation of  devices with high explosives, etc. Dr. Villa-Aleman published over 40 research papers in the open  literature and served and represented SRNL as point of contact (POC) for several research programs in  nuclear forensics, weaponization, remote sensing programs for the Office of Defense Nuclear  Nonproliferation Research & Development of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). He is a Laboratory Fellow in the Global Security Directorate at SRNL.

Thursday, February 23. 2023
4:00 pm seminar

Hybrid Option  (Speaker is in person)

zoom (link upon request)
or
Room 1202 Burlington Labs