Howard Hall, the joint UT-Oak Ridge National Laboratory Governor’s Chair for Global Nuclear Security was recently featured in the prestigious journal Science for his thoughts on post-nuclear fallout.
In the article, “Who dropped the bomb?,” writer Richard Stone discusses a growing field of which Hall plays a key role called postdetonation forensics.
As the name implies, it is the study of who was at fault following a nuclear explosion.
In much the same way that crime scenes are studied for evidence of who committed the illegal act, scientists such as Hall are using their knowledge of what materials go into which bombs to help construct a list of likely suspects, should an explosion occur.
In addition to his role as Governor’s Chair in the Department of Nuclear Engineering, Hall is a senior fellow in and director of the the Global Security Program at the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy, and the director of the Institute for Nuclear Security.
The article can be read at Science, the official publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.