The international maritime container trade, which imports an average of 19,000 largely uninspected cargo containers to United States ports each day, has been identified as a potential avenue of attack for nuclear terrorism. Currently envisioned and deployed defensive measures that seek to detect and interdict concealed fissile material once containers have already reached a U.S. port do not adequately protect against nuclear threats due to the unique power and range of nuclear weapon effects. This thesis describes and examines a novel "ship-based" approach to container-borne fissile material detection where suites of radiation detectors with imaging capabilities are enclosed in standard, non-descript cargo containers and shipped in limited numbers aboard commercial containerships. Outfitted with communication hardware, these dedicated containerized units could provide crucial advance detection and notification of an inbound nuclear threat while the danger is still safely removed from U.S. shores. Attributes of the container shipping trade that would impact the performance and viability of the proposed ship-based approach were identified and investigated.
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