Researchers are working to uncover the origins of uranium "cubes" created during World War II as part of nuclear weapons development, tracing some back to German projects, they said during a presentation Tuesday.

Scientists from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wa. and the University of Maryland in College Park are attempting to trace the history of the cubes from coatings applied to their surfaces, among other characteristics, they said at the American Chemical Society's fall meeting.

The analysis is focusing on cubes that have been at their respective facilities since the end of the war, and their approach could assist investigations into the illicit trafficking of nuclear material globally, they said.

"I'm glad the Nazi program wasn't as advanced as they wanted it to be by the end of the war," researcher Brittany Robertson said in a press release.

"Otherwise, the world would be a very different place," said Robertson, a doctoral student at working in the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

During World War II, Nazi Germany and the United States were each racing to develop nuclear technology.

However, before Germany could succeed, Allied forces disrupted the program and confiscated some of their cubes of uranium.

In the early 1940s, several German scientists were using nuclear fission to produce plutonium from uranium for the war, according to the researchers.

The teams included Werner Heisenberg's group in Berlin and Kurt Diebner's team at Gottow, and uranium cubes were produced to fuel nuclear reactors at these sites, the researchers said.

Measuring about 2 inches on each side, hundreds of the cubes were hung on cables submerged in "heavy" water -- water with deuterium instead of the lighter hydrogen -- they said.

Those leading the nuclear programs hoped the radioactive decay of the uranium in the assemblies would unleash a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, but the design failed.

U.S. and British forces seized some of the Heisenberg uranium cubes in 1945, and more than 600 of them were shipped stateside, with some used in the domestic nuclear weapons effort.

The ultimate fate of most of that uranium is unknown, the researchers said, but a few cubes thought to be associated with the program ended up in the United States and Europe.

One cube is at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which uses it to help train international border guards and nuclear forensics experts to detect nuclear material, but no one is sure how it got there, according to Jon Schwantes, principal investigator of the study presented Tuesday.

To prove the cube's origins, Robertson, Schwantes and their colleagues are using radiochronometry, the nuclear field's version of a technique developed by geologists to determine the age of samples based on radioactive isotope content.

When the cubes were first created, they contained fairly pure uranium, the researchers said. However, as time passed, radioactive decay transformed some of the uranium into thorium and protactinium, they said.

The researchers are now adapting radiochronometry so that it can better separate and quantify these elements in Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's cube, they said.

Their relative concentrations should show how long ago the cube was made. Rare-earth element impurities -- those created by some of the 17 nearly indistinguishable so-called "heavy" metals -- in it could also reveal where the original uranium was mined, according to the researchers.

At the same time, the researchers are testing the cubes' coatings, which the Germans applied to limit oxidation, they said.

The cube at the University of Maryland, for example, was recently found to be coated in styrene, which may mean it was used by Diebner's group at Gottow, the researchers said.

"We're curious if this particular cube was one of the ones associated with both research programs," Schwantes said.

"Also, this is an opportunity for us to test our science before we apply it in an actual nuclear forensic investigation," he said.

Related Links
Learn about nuclear weapons doctrine and defense at SpaceWar.com
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Learn about the Superpowers of the 21st Century at SpaceWar.com

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