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  Ian Hutcheon tests for illegal nuclear activity 

EarthSky

 Physicist Ian Hutcheon, of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is what you might call a nuclear detective. Hutcheon’s job is to look for evidence of the production of highly enriched uranium or plutonium, the essential components of nuclear weapons.

伊恩• 哈钦，劳伦斯利物摩尔国家实验室的物理学家，就是大家口中的核侦探。他的工作便是寻找生产高浓缩铀或钚的证据，而它们正是制造核武器必不可少的成分。

Ian Hutcheon: Intercepted samples come in all sizes and shapes, very much in the same form as if you go down to your local police station and look at the types of evidence that are collected at crime scenes.

伊恩• 哈钦：这些被截获的样本都有不同的大小和形状，极其像你去当地的警察局查看的由犯罪现场收集而来的各式各样的证据。

Hutcheon receives samples from nuclear facilities throughout the world. He then tests them for evidence of illegal materials like highly enriched uranium. It’s difficult to differentiate legal material from illegal material, Hutcheon said, because uranium is everywhere.

哈钦从全世界的核设施那里获得这些样本，接着他会逐个检测，看它们是否含有诸如高浓缩铀的非法原料。其实很难辨别出合法原料和非法原料，哈钦说，因为铀无处不在。

Ian Hutcheon: If you go out on the beach and pick up a handful of sand it contains about 4 parts per million of uranium.

伊恩• 哈钦：就算你在海滩上随便抓起一把沙，其中就有约百万分之四的铀。

Nuclear investigative testing is used by agencies such as the United Nations to monitor countries’ nuclear activities such as the production of enriched uranium and their compliance with international agreements on weapons of mass destruction.

联合国等部门常会利用核调查检测来监控各国的核活动，例如是否生产了浓缩铀，是否遵守了有关大规模杀伤性武器的国际协议。

Ian Hutcheon: Our charge is to measure the properties of the material and to demonstrate that we can do this with high precision, and that the data we can collect would stand up, for example, in a court of law.

伊恩• 哈钦：我们责任就是测量样本原料的各项属性，并证明我们能非常精确地测量出结果，而我们所收集的数据即便在法庭上也是能站得住脚的。

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