Verification of Nuclear Warheads

This talk will introduce some concepts on why verification of nuclear warheads is not straight forward. We will begin with a brief timeline of nuclear weapon treaties to provide historical context, which will be followed by a discussion of the properties of the relevant materials that might be leveraged to verify a declared warhead. We will then present a high-level view of some of the additional constraints on conducting verification measurements on nuclear warheads, focusing on safety, security, and confidence. Finally, we will discuss types of measurements that can be conducted, relating back to how these types of measurements can potentially meet the non-physics constraints.