Citation:
W.S. Charlton D.G. Ford, “Assessment Tool for Nuclear Weapon Acquisition Pathways”, Annual Meeting of the Institute for Nuclear Materials Management, July 8-12, 2007, Tucson, AZ.
Abstract:
An assessment tool has been developed at Texas A&M University for predicting weapons useable material acquisition based on an acquisition network simulation. The network has been designed to include all of the material, facilities, and expertise that must be obtained to acquire Special Nuclear Material (SNM), each of which are represented by a unique node. Using various historical cases and open source expert opinion the resources required to successfully obtain the goal of every node within the network was determined. A visual representation of the network was created within Microsoft Visio. This program utilizes Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to run its default macros, and enables the user to include any additional coding. Using this feature a tool has been developed to predict that most likely pathway(s) that a predefined organization is most likely to take. The methodology uses the resources available to the organization, along with any of the nodes the organization may already have access to, to determine which path the organization is most likely to find the most attractive.