Stuff You Should Know - What is nuclear forensics?

Episode Date: November 23, 2017

Nuclear forensics is a lot of things - from UN sponsored inspections to tasks more on the down low. But either way, the job of these men and women is to root out possible nuclear weapon threats. It's a fairly unknown and thankless task, so allow us to shed a little light on this very cool and very necessary line of work. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello, Seattle, hello, Portland. We're coming out to see you this January live. That's right, what are the dates, my friend? January 15th, we're gonna be at the Moore Theater in Seattle, and on January 16th,

we're gonna be at Revolution Hall again in Portland. That's right, tickets are being snapped up fast, everyone, cause you love us out there, and we love you right back. So just go to sysklive.com for all ticket details. We can't wait to see you. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.

There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Rowland, and it's us, Stuff You Should Know, the nuclear investigators. I thought this was really neat. I did too, I did too. I had a silly title, I thought, how good is this gonna be, but then you, and our article was good enough,

but then you found that great article from Economist. The Economist, yeah. Man, that was good. Yes, yeah, our article was written by Robert Layham, and it was great, but it gets even better. Yeah, like people should, I think this is one of those, like take 20 minutes out of your day, and read the new detectives from The Economist.

Just good like, and we'll give you a good overview here, but just good knowledge to have, you know? Yeah, because you don't really think about this, but there is, in my opinion, thankfully, a, an international network of people who are dedicated to preventing people from getting nukes, who shouldn't have it, depending on who you are. Right.

Like there's a whole, I looked up at this question, like, is it the right of any sovereign nation to have whatever nuclear technology it wants? Yeah. And I saw, that's actually apparently like, you know, those sites like debate.org, and like debate prep sites or something they'll have, like a bunch of different brain teasers.

Yeah, something like that. Yeah. And that seems to be mostly where it lives, but I found this one guy on Forbes who argued that is not the case, that if you have not demonstrated a, like an allegiance to liberal democratic principles and freedom, and that you're just looking out for your people, that your role as a government, that is to say,

like if you're an autocratic government, you haven't, you don't have enough sovereign cred to enjoy the right to nukes. This is how this guy was arguing against, like North Korea having the right to a nuclear program, right? Right. But my thing is, I think it goes even further than that. I think that that assumes, because he was also

saying at the same time, if you are a friendly nation and you are a liberal democracy, you kind of should have the right to a military nuclear program. But like liberal democracies can change over time. The nukes are going to remain. So what was once a friendly nation may not be 30 or 50 years from now, but they're still going to have a nuclear stockpile

or some governments dissolve. Look at the USSR. They had one of the world's largest nuclear arsenals, still do, but then the government just disintegrated and it turned into the Russian Federation, which has arguably much looser control over the nuclear stockpile. And we talked about this and how easy is it to steal a nuclear bomb, that episode we did.

Yeah, I think after the Soviet Union dissolved, that was a really scary time. And we continue to see the fallout from that as far as the black market trade on nuclear either weapons or the technology or the information or the pieces parts, the mouth parts, as we like to say, around here. And luckily, like you said, there

is a field called Nuclear Forensics. And as Robert Astutely points out, they have sort of a three-track challenge on their hands, which is, A, what they do is they monitor places and countries and organizations. So they can basically stop them from developing nuclear arms if they're not supposed to be. People on the no-no list, then they

track extremist groups and smugglers and try to find out where these, there's a lot of, we'll get to it later, but a lot of stuff goes missing, which is super scary. Yeah, can I just interject here for a second? Sure. In 2011, the US, the United States announced that it could not account for 5,900 pounds

of weapons usable nuclear material that it had previously shipped around the world. Wow. And that's the US. That's gone, 5,900. They said it was enough for dozens of nuclear warheads. And then finally, the third thing that you will do as a nuclear detective

or in the field of nuclear forensics is, if something does happen, if there is a radiological attack or a nuclear bomb that goes off or is launched, they are the ones who will investigate the scene, just like you would any crime scene. Exactly, yeah. So those are kind of the three things

that a nuclear forensic detective, I guess, is the best way to put it, would be involved in doing. And there's a lot of other science around it and research around it, too, which is why you very rarely find somebody who is a full time, at least in the US, I should say, is a full time nuclear forensics expert. Most of the time, they're doing the science that's

helping the field. So there's a project at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to identify the elemental signature of the uranium that comes from all 150 uranium mines that have ever existed on planet Earth, right? So if you come across a sample of uranium, you can trace it back to its point of origin. That's something that you would do if you were a nuclear

forensics expert when you're not actually, like, say, investigating a case or carrying out a routine inspection of a non-military nuclear state, that kind of thing. Yeah, they're like football referees. Kind of. And side gigs. Right.

And it's pretty cool that these guys even exist, right? The idea that there are people out there who are inspecting states, and by states, I mean countries, obviously. I'm using it in the security kind of way, right? People out there whose job it is is to say, you are not holding up to international standards. We think that you are going down the road toward a military nuclear program.

That's not allowed. We're going to tell. Yeah, and Robert has a neat little way to put. We talked about mutually assured destruction many years ago, I think, in a show. And in 1970, 190 nations signed the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, a.k.a. NPT. Is that confusing?

a.k.a. NPT? I think that's like the acronyms, the abbreviation of the non-proliferation treaty. That's right. I think. But he talks about mutually assured destruction like this, like a movie standoff where, and I always equate this with reservoir dogs, like two people aiming a gun,

or three people aiming a gun at one another. If you are all three aiming the gun at one another, then there is a likelihood that no one will fire because you could all die, and maybe you will just lower your guns. And that's the idea with mutually assured destruction. If we all have, not all, but if these nations have nuclear weapons, they know that just exchanging

nukefire, everyone's seen war games, you can't win. You can't win. The trick comes in when someone else comes into that room, like in Reservoir Dogs, when Lawrence Tierney comes in at the very end, and they're already pointing their guns, and then you've got a new gun on the scene, and that's when everybody dies. Right, or I guess probably an even better analogy

is that with the non-proliferation treaty, if somebody came in, if say Barbara Streisand came into the standoff in Reservoir Dogs, and a complete surprise twist in the director's cut of the movie, and said, everybody, everybody, calm down, lower your guns. Here's a little number from Yentl. Right, and she does her little number,

and it just charms everybody into forgetting their troubles, and they put their guns up, and that's that. That's the aim of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It goes even further than that. Imagine if Babs, as she was walking around doing her number from Yentl, she was taking everybody's guns up, too, and then maybe disassembling them quickly with a little jazzy number going, and that was that.

So not only is there the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it was saying everybody calm down. That was mutual assured destruction, I guess. The Non-Proliferation Treaty comes in and says, not only are you going to calm down, let's get rid of some of these nuclear weapons, too. Let's disassemble them. Right, but when Lawrence Tierney or Barbara Streisand

walk in with a gun, aka NPT, aka having another nuclear player all of a sudden, that disrupts the weird balance that is mutually assured destruction. It does, for sure, which is why a lot, I think 190 nations ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which says, yes, all you guys with all your big nukes and everything, get rid of some of those.

We don't like them being here on planet Earth. The problem with that is, is that the organization that was created to oversee this, the International Atomic Energy Agency, I think. Yeah, the IEA. They're basically, they amount to nuclear accountants, right? Their whole jam is that they are, they go in and they say the international community says

that you can have this, you can have nuclear capabilities for peaceful purposes, for the power generation, or for your hospitals or whatever, but you can't have it, you can't have a military program. And it's not hard once you have one to, to have the other, right? Once you have a peaceful program down, it would not be very hard to translate

that into a military program. The IAEA is tasked with coming to your country, coming behind your borders and looking at your program and making sure that it's non-military. And if everything checks off, they can turn around and say to the rest of the world, this country is keeping their promise and all they have is a peaceful program.

Everybody can be friends with this guy. Or if they find that there is evidence of a military program, they say, guys, you're gonna wanna hear about this. North Korea over here is secretly working on a nuclear program and we've done our jobs. Now it's up to the international community to figure out what to do about it.

Right, but here's the thing is, you know, they're a UN organization. So these are the above board, let me come and knock on your door and get an invitation to come in and inspect your stuff. I got all my machines, all my gear, they can sniff out radiation and you allow me in or you don't allow me in.

This isn't the clandestine FBI and spy agencies that very much also do the same thing from satellites and you know, in all kinds of other ways on the ground. But the IAEA, it really depends on these UN mandates and cooperation from the country. So for instance, in 2002 and 2007, North Korea said, kindly leave our country. And they had to do so.

Yes. You know, it's not like they draw a gun then and say, no, we're here to inspect your stuff. Don't you get it? Right, but what they do is basically go tell the people with the guns, right? So that's like a real red flag. Oh, sure.

To not let the IAEA access to your peaceful program. You can look everywhere, but in this room. Right. That's not a good thing. Yeah, or to kick them out. Like that really raises red flags and it did in those instances too, right? Yeah.

So yes, they are toothless. I mean, it is after all a UN body, but they are backed up by the collective might of the nuclear military nations who say basically, this is the status quo of the world. There's eight countries that have a nuclear program. Most of them are allies and they are tasked, those allies have taken it upon themselves

to say no one else can have a nuclear program. You're not supposed to have a nuclear program. You're not supposed to be building nukes. We say if you can have a military nuclear program and we say no. And every once in a while, a state that is not part of that group comes up on their own with their own military nuclear program.

And when they do, the other countries have to decide what to do about it. Yeah, and they, you know, the IAEA does very good work. It works to a certain degree like in 2003 when they said, hey Libya, hey Iran, we have evidence now that you have a military program going. And so Libya said, all right, I'm gonna give that up. Iran at least gave up their suppliers in Pakistan.

Yeah, AQ Khan. Yeah, and they do good work. They won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. However, depending on who you ask, like the United States may say, you guys are being too nice and too lenient. Countries that are getting inspected say, well, I think you're actually being a little bit too nosy.

So it's definitely the above board approach UN style to getting this curbed. Right, there are a lot of other ways to like look into whether or not somebody has a military program. We'll take a little break and we'll talk about those. How about that? Yes.

And it's like in Joshua's shock. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.

And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So, Chuckers, we were talking about the above boards way,

where the U.M. politely knocks on your door and does some inspections. And there's some cool stuff that they have going on, right? Like they install digital cameras in the facilities and they're like set and programmed to take pictures if there's movement near like a piece of equipment that could turn this peaceful nuclear program into a military program.

And then they're all time stamped and dated and ordered sequentially. So if there's any missing, some software will catch the fact that a picture has been deleted and now all of a sudden, you've got an international incident, right? That's right. They also use laser surveying equipment

to survey the layout of the, oh, what are they called? Oh, the centrifuges. Yeah. The piping of the centrifuge. Because so you have to have a centrifuge to have a peaceful nuclear program, right? Like you take uranium

and uranium has like 0.7% uranium in it, uranium ore, I should say the stuff that you find in nature. Now to have like, to create nuclear fuel for a nuclear power plant, you've got to isolate the uranium-235 isotope. And you do that by spinning it in gas in a vacuum so fast that you're hitting like 70,000 RPMs and it separates the isotopes.

And then those things are connected, all those centrifuges are connected by tubes of gas so that the isotopes you want, all kind of mingle and migrate to the place you want them to where you collect them. And then all of a sudden, you have 3% concentration of uranium. Now you have nuclear fuel

that you can use for peaceful purposes. If you keep it going, if you make some upgrades to your whole composition and rearrange the pipes a little bit here or there, and you can get that stuff up to 90% concentration of uranium-235, now you have weapons-grade uranium. Now you can build nuclear warheads with that.

What the IAEA does with their laser surveys of these centrifuge gas pipes is they survey them, digitize that and then do it again when they come a year or two years later and see if there's been any alterations or modifications to that pipe that would indicate that they're trying to make that uranium even more enriched.

Yeah, so this is the IAEA's good work that they're doing. And this is when they, like we said, go to countries that say, come on in, then there is a whole other problem that is terrorist and drug cartels and basically the black market, nuclear black market, and that's a whole different deal. You can't go knocking on their door

and they're not gonna say, come on in, you probably don't even know where their door is, which is the whole point. So if you're wondering how big of an issue is this, how much should we worry, just go read a little document called the IAEA Elicit Trafficking Database. It's a little frightening.

So what they will do is they'll, it's not very long, they have like a two or three page report, and I think the most recent one I saw was 2015 numbers where they will basically say how many incidents of unauthorized acquisition, possession, use, transfer, or disposal of nuclear or radioactive materials were there.

And there was, the good news is it's gone down. There was some huge spike in 2006 when you look at these charts. I have no idea what happened in 2006, but it's sort of level. And then 2006, it just like ramps up. Like I think there were 130 something cases in 2006 compared to just over 40 in 2015.

Yeah, that's a pretty big spike. It's a big spike and like the graphs really, really stand out. So I don't know what was going on then, but it's still a little scary to see just how many cases there are where things go missing or things are not disposed of right

or things are acquired or sold on the black market. And this is just the stuff they know about. Yeah, these are just the ones that got caught. And that whole non-proliferation is a double-edged sword as well as far as the nuclear black market goes because yes, you're disassembling nuclear warheads, but then that means that nuclear grade plutonium

or uranium is now being transported somewhere for storage or something like that. So it's back in play, I guess. Whereas before you'd have to steal the whole nuclear warhead, now you just have a big lump of weapons grade uranium that's being transported across the Atlantic, you know? Yeah.

So that represents a change in security too. I wonder if there were a bunch of nuclear warheads that were disassembled that year. I don't know. I bet someone knows the answer though. I wanna know. That we'll write in. So like you were saying,

like there is the whole black market that represents an entirely different side to this. And there are plenty of terrorist organizations and just what you would call bad actors, which is hilarious, but it's also pretty sinister if you think about it, who would just like to get their hands on this kind of stuff. Some of the people that they're selling it to

are representatives of countries that want to have their own military program, like North Korea or Iraq. I should say Saddam Hussein or Iraq, which were both successful in creating nuclear programs right under the noses of the international intelligence community. Yeah, and you know,

well, we'll get to that a little bit later, like how some of the ways that they can skirt this stuff. Okay. But the good news is, is that it is, you can't just get uranium at the corner store. Right. You can only mine for it in certain places.

You can't just get that uranium and throw it into a hand grenade casing. And then you have a little tiny nuclear bomb. Well, that's a dirty bomb at least. Well, yeah, there are such things as dirty bombs, but as far as like nuclear warheads, they have to be made in very special ways with very special materials.

And the good news is that, I won't say it's easy, but it is all pretty trackable to a certain degree on like these nuclear forensics teams. They can generally find out even by examining the uranium, like where it actually came from or where did this casing come from?

It can be tracked pretty readily at this point. Yeah, and that's where the nuclear forensic scientists are also doing like the day-to-day science to create a database, like the signatures of uranium from the 150 mines around the world. Right. That's where that stuff kind of comes into play,

is when you find something, the dude who's smuggling it, he may give up whoever he knows, but that doesn't mean it's going to lead anywhere. Actually studying the material that he was smuggling is it can frequently give up more information than that person even knows, you know? Yeah, for sure.

But to do that, you have to catch the material when it's say coming through your border or your port. And there are, well, there's a number of ways to do this, right? Yeah, I mean, you can do a lot with satellite imagery, of course, but you can only do so much with satellite imagery. Like to really find this stuff, I mean, the good news is radiation gives off radiation.

So are these uranium and stuff like that gives off radiation. Right. But you need to be on, like ideally, you need to be on the ground and fairly close to it to read it. Yeah, the detectors have gotten way better. Supposedly they need like just a fifth of the mass that it used to take to set off a reading.

But yeah, you still have to be, I think the next generation will be basically a football field, an American football field length. Pretty good, 100 yards. Yeah, 100 yards, roughly 100 meters. But that means that you have to have a person in a hostile nation, walking around with a detector within a football field of a nuclear facility.

That's a lot of, that's a tall order in a lot of cases, right? There are detectors that are attached to satellites that can detect radiation into the atmosphere. That's amazing. Yeah, and apparently they've gotten a lot better too, but the problem is that radiation, there's a couple of things with actual radiation.

It can be shielded relatively easily with a thick layer of concrete. Yeah, or lead. Or lead. And the stuff that does escape can get absorbed into the atmosphere. So I think the detectors, like satellite detectors, are getting much better than they were before.

And probably the stuff that we know about here in this article is probably 10 years old. I'm sure we're far more advanced than this article would say as far as something like a radiation detector attached to a satellite goes. Oh, like even the two-year-old article you think is behind? Yeah, I think so.

As far as what they released in the public. Yeah, I get what you're laying down. So I think that it's probably much better, but again, radiation can be shielded. One thing that nuclear detectives have figured out though is that there's a part of a nuclear reactor, not a part of it, but something that's created in nuclear reactors,

neutrinos, that you can't do anything about. They're going to escape because they pass so easily through matter that they will actually travel through solid earth unfazed by anything it comes in contact with. Yeah. And they've created this. Do you see Cosmos the reboot with Neil deGrasse Tyson?

Yeah, I saw some of them. Did you see the one where he was like in a boat in like a neutrino cave underground? I did not. So it's really neat. Like he was standing up in a boat in this really dark cave that had like little lights or something kind of starlight.

It was a romantic scene. And where he was was this cave underground. I think it's the one in Ohio where it's underground in an old salt mine and it's filled with water and it's underground to protect it from cosmic rays that could give off false readings. But it's meant to pick up neutrinos that are traveling through the earth

from nuclear reactors, right? Yeah. And the way that it does that is since neutrinos interact like almost not at all with matter, which is why they can pass unaffected through solid earth, when it comes in contact with a certain atom in water, it gives off the faintest flash of light. And if you have enough water,

this is actually a pretty rare occurrence when it happens. But if you have enough water, it's going to happen eventually and you're going to be able to detect it with underwater photo sensors, right? So what they've done is fill this old salt mine with a huge, supposedly it will take like a million tons of water to detect neutrinos

from a thousand kilometers away. But when a hostile nation or a nation that's not supposed to have a nuclear program runs an on-off cycle of their nuclear enrichment reactor, or they're enriching their nuclear material, you will be able to detect that through neutrinos in your underground cave neutrino detector. Isn't that insane?

Yeah. Think about how much trouble that is, but that it actually works. It's amazing. I think it's amazing too. And Neil deGrasse Tyson is the man. Can we just say that again? Oh yeah, for sure.

All right, should we take a break here? Sure. All right, we'll come back and we'll talk a little bit more about sort of the latest and greatest technology we have going as well as some other sneaky ways to hide this kind of activity right after this. And it's like the Joshua shock. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called

David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in,

as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.

Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael.

And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen,

so we'll never, ever have to say, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, so I can't stress enough that this great economist article called The Newt Detectives really learned a lot from it, and there's this, it kind of starts out by talking about, and this is if you have not prevented

someone from getting nuclear materials, and they are actually doing nuclear tests, which ideally you have stopped the process before that. But let's be honest, sometimes things slip through the cracks, people get their hands, or countries get their hands, or rogue nations and terrorists get their hands on these materials, and they want to test out bombs and things. They are now using some amazing equipment, seismographic

equipment, would that be the way to say it? Yeah. To detect this stuff, to the point now, there's a group called the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, and that's a fancy way of saying they listen around the world with these seismograph machines to the point where Dr. Zerbo, which is the greatest name ever.

I know, especially for like a nuclear, international nuclear scientist. Dr. Zerbo says, now it is impossible to test the smallest nuclear weapon anywhere on Earth in secret. They will hear it. Yep. It's amazing.

Yeah, the CTBTO, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, right? Is that correct? That is correct. They have, so I saw it listed somewhere, but this article kind of lays it out. They have 170 seismic stations worldwide, 11 underwater hydroacoustic centers,

so you can detect the sound waves in the ocean, 60 atmospheric infrasound listening stations. They're showing off at that point. Right, I know. And then 96 radionucleide sampling facilities. I think that's the ones that, like those satellites that can detect radiation leaks. I think that's like that.

So yeah, like around the world, they've got it locked down. You cannot set off a nuclear weapon in them not know about it. That is correct. Another big thing that they're doing now is software, network analysis software. After 9-Eleven, America really started ramping up, as everyone knows, their listening skills. And not in like a polite, my friend,

has some issues they need to talk through away. You know what I mean? Like me. So they now have all the software that can, the feeling I get is what the software now does. It's able to just draw from all these different areas, whether it's email or social media or phone calls or receipts and credit card transactions.

Yeah, like prism. Yeah, and it will feed it all into these software programs now that will eventually narrow it down to, hey, this person might be a baddie. Because they have ticked off, not as an angered, but they have checked so many boxes in our software system of activities that they're undertaking that you might want to go take a look at them.

Yeah, and the things that this, did you say the name Aura? O-R-A? I did not. So Aura is a good example of this kind of software. That's from Carnegie Mellon, and basically it, it has been adapted to not just track terrorists, but to track nuclear scientists now. I think like 30,000 of them around the world.

Yeah. So if you're a nuclear scientist and you're in the prime of your career and you publish an article every 18 to 36 weeks on average according to the computer and all of a sudden you just stop, you're going to set off a red flag. They're going to wonder why you stopped publishing

at the height of your career. Yeah. And they're going to say, you know, it's entirely possible that they got drafted into a nuclear military program where you would not be allowed to publish. So that might set off a red flag. And then there's another computer, I think the Pentagon has set up called Constellation.

The Whopper. Which again, is probably, yeah, it's probably 20 years out of date by now if it's in this article. But this Constellation is a computer that takes the information from all these other computers, all these other softwares, and puts them together and says, oh, well, not only did that guy stop publishing at the height of his nuclear science career,

he also just moved within commuting distance of a facility that is suspected by Army intelligence of possibly being holding nuclear centrifuges that aren't registered anywhere. Yeah. And there are other programs. There's one software program that uses what's called combinatorial mathematics. And what they do is they analyze data

to end up with a set of criteria called centrality betweenness and degree. Centrality being how important someone is in the system. Betweenness is their access to other people and the degree is the number of people they interact with. And the idea there is what they're looking for, generally, are network members that have high betweenness and low degree.

So those are probably like Osama bin Laden is a good example, like toward the end. He has access to a lot of people, but he's not interacting with a lot of people. Well, he's like a higher up, I think, is what it indicates. Somebody of importance in the network, right? Yeah.

And this is all extremely G-wiz. But then you hear about, oh, it's actually being applied in real life. Back in, I think, 2010, 11, 12, at least five nuclear scientists working on Iran's nuclear program were murdered. One of them was picking his child up or dropping his child off at daycare, just gunned down by guys in the street or car bombs or something like that.

And the one thing that they had in common was that they were all working on Iran's nuclear program. And they think that the Mossad used intelligence that was gathered by this type of software program to figure out if you kill these people, it will really screw up the program because they're important figures in this program. Even though we don't know them, we know their names,

and that's it. We don't know anything about them. Just based on this metadata that these programs put together, we can tell you that if they weren't around any longer, it would set the whole program back. And they did. Yeah, and like I was saying earlier, the good news is if you want to build, and again, we're not

talking about dirty bombs and stuff, but if you want to build a nuclear warhead, there are very specialized parts that you have to buy in order to do so. So they have software that monitors this stuff around the world. And what this article calls, they reveal choke points, basically, that they can monitor the ceramic composites

for the centrifuges that you have to have. In order to pull this off, there's only so many companies that do that in the world. So that's the good news. You can't run out to Walmart and buy this stuff to make this happen. So it makes it a little bit easier to monitor what's going on to a certain degree.

Right. That's got to be a huge help, man, having that. Oh, yeah. Especially together with human intelligence, which apparently is still one of the best ways to find out about a nuclear program. There was this one, I think, Syria was working on their nuclear program.

And they had, with the assistance of North Korea, they had built a facility where they lowered the floor so that they could start their military nuclear program in secret. And rather than a cooling tower, they connected to a nearby reservoir with underground pipes. And they had this whole thing set up. And if you were looking at it and you

were a military analyst looking for evidence of a nuclear facility being built, you would immediately check that building off the list because it was too low, too close to the ground. It wasn't tall enough to house a nuclear facility. And they did. Oh, I'm sure, over and over. I'm sure they saw this building plenty of times.

And it wasn't until some human intelligence gave it up that it became clear that, oh, actually, this is a nuclear facility. So you can fool the international. Even the nuclear detectives can be fooled, I guess what I'm saying, which is kind of surprising. But one of the ways that you do that is you figure out how to build your nuclear program in-house.

You get detected when you start to spread out through the black market or to that company that makes the composites needed for centrifuges. Yeah, like Iran, for example, they used in that same article. They can mine the uranium themselves in the country, which is a little scary. And then they can also, or they at least had been working on producing those centrifuge rotors

instead with carbon fiber instead of the special steel that they need to outsource. So all of a sudden, you're not on that list. You're doing it in-house. And it seems like from reading this, the good news is they're getting more and more specialized equipment that you can detect stuff from further away and our capabilities in the software

is getting better and better. But these places are also finding more and more ways to sidestep traditional manufacturing means, which is kind of scary at the same time. Yeah, apparently Saddam Hussein had a nuclear program that he was working on that he was able to come up with. I was mentioning it earlier, where he did it by basically going retro.

He used a process of separating uranium isotopes through electromagnetism rather than centrifuges. So he didn't need centrifuges. And apparently it's so low tech and so out of use that no analysts were looking for evidence of that. So they just totally missed it. But he was still able to come up with a nuclear program using that old outdated technology purposefully

from what I understand. Wow. Yeah, and then, of course, North Korea's nuclear program was just a total surprise to everybody. I mean, people suspected it and were very concerned that it was going on. But it wasn't until Kim Jong-un or ill. I can't remember which one it would have been.

But back in 2010, they invited a Stanford professor out and showed it to him so he could go tell the world. Yeah. It shocked everybody. I remember when that happened. Yeah. Why in the world did they let that happen? Yeah, I mean, I don't know how it happened.

I think it happened because of that guy we mentioned earlier, AQ Khan from Pakistan. He was the father of Pakistan's military nuclear program who was educated in Europe and stole some blueprints for making nuclear weapons and went about building Pakistan one. And then they started turning to countries like Libya, Iran, North Korea, and offering basically turn-key military

nuclear programs based on Pakistan's designs for like $100 million. Wow. And then he ended up as a scapegoat for his nation and was placed under a luxurious house arrest. But still, from what I understand, the guy was very upset about this because he went from being treated like a god to being

treated like it's his fault that there's nuclear proliferation among rogue states and was finally released a few years, I think five years later. And I mean, that guy, he deserves his own episode. He was fascinating. I think still is. I believe he's still around, too.

What's his name? AQ Khan. Can we call it the wrath of Khan? That's what they did in the Atlantic. I couldn't believe it. So the big question is, and the economist thankfully asked that, could you build a nuclear weapon in secret?

And there's a couple of opinions there. They asked the foreign secretary of Pakistan, former foreign secretary, Riyaz Mohamed Khan. And he said, nope, can't do that in secret anymore. But there was an anonymous American State Department counter proliferation official who said, it's not impossible. So don't be fooled. Yeah, a little worrisome.

Yeah, it really is. I mean, you really like to think that nobody could do this anymore, but apparently it is getting easier and easier. But like you said, it's also making it easier and easier to detect. It's like any illegal operations. It's like a game of cat and mouse on the development side of good guys developing stuff, bad guys developing stuff.

Yeah. It's really interesting. But in this case, this game of cat and mouse, you have some of the smartest human beings on the planet who have banded together to say, no, no, we're not going to let this happen. Yeah. OK.

Well, if you want to know more about nuclear detectives or nuclear forensics, start digging, because there's plenty out there. And man, is it fascinating. Since I said it's fascinating, it's time for Listener Mail. So before we do Listener Mail, buddy, can we talk a little bit about our old friends at the Cooperative for Education?

Oh, yes, let's, Chuck. Coed. Yeah, the quick download with Coed is we went to Guatemala quite a few years ago with them. They invited us to come down. You, me, and Jerry, we all went down. We saw the great work they do, like real on the ground, hard work, helping children of Guatemala

pull themselves out of poverty through education. Yeah, yeah, it's in our two-part Guatemala special that everybody can go listen to if you haven't heard it. And get this, Chuck. So Coed has another drive going on. And they are making it their mission to keep 1,000 girls in Guatemala from dropping out of school by 2020.

That's amazing, dude. It takes 12 years of education to break the cycle of poverty in Guatemala. But a poor rural Guatemalan has only one in 20 chance of reaching that milestone. So they are literally identifying young women to literally keep them in school. Like, it's not some nebulous campaign,

and you're not sure where your money's going. You are helping a young woman in Guatemala stay in school and get educated. Yep, so you can sponsor one of those girls for $70 a month, or if you want to do half of that, $35 a month, Coed will match you with another sponsor to make sure that there is a student who is able to continue her education,

and therefore eventually break her family out of the cycle of poverty that dropping out of school perpetuates. Yeah, it's really great. They're awesome people. So if you weren't a good person this year and you want to make up for it here before the end of the year, or if you want to start off 2018 in the right way,

go to 1000girlsinitiative.org, and that is all spelled out, not the number 1,000, 1000girlsinitiative.org, and you can actually pick out the student you want to sponsor. It's just the best. Coed's great, and we're really happy that we're still working with them.

Yep, so keep up the good work, Coed, and you guys, please, please go help these guys out. All right, and now on to listener mail. Yes. I'm going to call this restaurant health inspection from a manager's perspective. Okay. And I do have permission to read this.

I love listening to the show on health inspections, guys. Want to throw in a couple of tidbits. From my point of view, first you were spot on with just about everything with your research, including how some employees take no exception to sanitary practice. Those employees tend to not have a very long career. When the health inspector shows up,

you see the staff start to scramble. In the business, we call that the two-minute drill, and that is not to say that we don't keep our restaurant up to standards because we do, but we want it to be perfect. Typically, this made me feel a lot better, by the way, reading this. Yeah.

Typically, the HD comes to the restaurant at the most inopportune times, right in the middle of a busy lunch service. At that point, the kitchen is cooking 100 dishes at the same time. Servers are running drinks and taking orders. Dirty dishes are stacking up a bit in the back. With the health inspection pass fail scale

being so specific, the slightest thing can fail you. Anything from an ice scoop in the ice bin to a fruit fly or a steak resting at temperature that is off by two degrees. We as managers like to continue to train our staff to keep things tidy, but also have a few quick fixes in order to maintain that A rating. Washing hands is a must anytime food is handled,

especially when the inspectors are on site. As you know, it's a very nerve-wracking time while they are checking every nook and cranny. That is why we managers are required by law to get health certified to ensure we are training our staff properly and not allowing any boots in the Brunswick stew. He said Bratwurst stew, so.

I saw that, I think he might be insane. As always, thanks for an incredible podcast and providing us with information on things we may not usually have knowledge to prior. All the best, Derek. He said, yes, we have a remarkable cuisine at my place. So if you ever are in the area, come on by and we'll treat you to some great food.

We have the best Bratwurst stew in the region. Well, he didn't say what restaurant he worked at. Oh, actually it's in his email. Okay. I'm not gonna read that, but they're in Boston, so maybe when we go back to the Wilbur. We can go get some Boston cream pie cake and then some Bratwurst stew.

Delicious. Yeah, cool, thanks a lot. What was the guy's name? Derek. Thanks a lot, Derek. That was a great email and yes, indeed it did make, it made me feel a lot better too, Chuck. If you wanna make me and Chuck feel better,

well, just send us an email. First, you can tweet to us. I'm at Josh on Clark and at S-Y-S-K Podcast. Chuck's man in the Facebook pages at Charles W. Chuck Bryant and at Stuff You Should Know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at housestuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web,

stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housestuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander

each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.