ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nucl. Eng.
Sec. Nuclear Materials
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnuen.2025.1634367
Nuclear Forensic Analysis of Thorium Materials: recreation of a legacy processing method
Provisionally accepted
Matthew Higginson1*
Erin Holland2Philip Kaye1
Thomas Scott2Tomas Martin2Christopher R D Gilligan1Karen Kennedy1Samuel Samuel Cross1Christopher Brook1- 1Atomic Weapons Establishment, Reading, United Kingdom
- 2University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
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Nuclear forensic science aims to correlate measurable parameters to the processing history of nuclear materials to support law enforcement investigations. Controlled studies on elemental fractionation with processing are valued on materials of known provenance to validate methods and signatures. There is need to understand how useful current applied techniques are when applied to thorium materials. In this study, we discuss the potential nuclear forensic signatures in thorium materials and report an academic study processing a monazite ore of known provenance through a historic industrial process to thorium dioxide. The measurements traced a variety of 'fingerprint' material properties and impurities through the processing route. It was shown that radiometric methods, relative rare earth element abundances, impurities, radiochronometry and microscopy were useful for characterising the material.
Keywords: Nuclear forensic analysis, Thorium fuel cycle, Nuclear forensic signatures, Actinide analysis, Thorium Analysis
Received: 24 May 2025; Accepted: 26 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Higginson, Holland, Kaye, Scott, Martin, Gilligan, Kennedy, Cross and Brook. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Matthew Higginson, Atomic Weapons Establishment, Reading, United Kingdom
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