Role of International Recommendations in Development and Maintaining Stable Capabilities of Nuclear Forensics

International nuclear forensics documents can play a significant role in helping countries in developing as well as in maintaining stable national nuclear forensics capabilities. These documents can accumulate whole experience, gained by different countries in solving problems that arise in both: in setting analytical tasks and in analyzing NRM samples or samples contaminated with trace amounts of NRM. International recommendations for the development and maintenance of stable nuclear forensic capabilities may have two directions: • Proposals for the organization and improvement of the national system for identification of NRM, detected outside regulatory control; • Recommendations for performing analyses of samples in the framework of forensic examination of physical evidence. Proposals for the organization and improvement of the national system should be developed by a team of specialists in different fields and from different countries. The team of authors should include representatives of law enforcement agencies: experts in the field of legislation, as well as practitioners conducting criminal investigations, and both kinds of analysts: experts in the field of nuclear forensic examinations as well as experts in traditional forensic techniques. Moreover, if the document under development concerns practical recommendations on interaction with courts, than countries with different judicial systems and with different rules and traditions of law enforcement agencies should be represented in the team. If the recommendations contain proposals for structural changes in existing national services and organizations, these recommendations should be discussed with representatives of such services and organizations from different countries. These proposals should have clear purposes and contain only carefully verified definitions, basic concepts and approaches. These definitions, concepts and approaches must comply with the definitions, basic concepts and approaches developed and adopted in other areas of forensic science, and should not contradict the culture of the forensic community.