My Story
Sidney Niemeyer loved science from an early age, and he also loved mystery stories. During his tenure as Nuclear Chemistry Division leader at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a premier national security laboratory, he articulated the need for the U.S. to develop a nuclear forensics capability. During the early years of Homeland Security, he was appointed to serve as the DHS point-of-contact with the interagency to develop this capability.
After he retired from the Laboratory, he became painfully aware of how few people have even heard of this new field of nuclear forensics. Drawing upon his love of science and mystery, he wrote his fictional thriller, Atomic Peril, to show the critical importance of this capability for deterring nuclear terrorism.
Endorsements
Sid Niemeyer is one of the “founding fathers” of the U.S. nuclear forensics program. To this day he remains one of the most knowledgeable, highly respected authorities in the country and around the world. In 2006 I was selected to establish the National Technical Nuclear Forensics Center, which I then led for ten years. On day one, Sid was assigned from Livermore Lab as my expert scientific right-hand man. We were fortunate that he has that rare ability to make extraordinarily complex subjects easily understood to the layman. I leaned heavily on Sid as we built a national nuclear forensics capability which stands to this day—and I could not have done it without him. Simply stated, Sid remains a towering expert in the nation’s ongoing efforts to prevent or respond to nuclear terrorism.
Dr. Sidney Niemeyer has been at the forefront of nuclear forensics since its inception in the mid-1990s when he, with international partners, developed the “model action plan” to guide the conduct of a nuclear forensics examination. This plan was used by countries to address high profile seizures of fissionable nuclear materials. As the leading internal expert in the field, Dr. Niemeyer was the founding co-chair of the Nuclear Forensics International Technical Working Group (ITWG) which is recognized as the leading association of nuclear forensics practitioners drawn from more than 35 states worldwide. In 2001, at the request of the U.S. Government, he led the inception of domestic nuclear forensics efforts that linked analytical assets existing at the U.S. National Laboratories with federal departments, including the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, the Department of State, as well as the Department of Justice. After his retirement, he regularly advises the U.S. Government and international partners on a broad range of topics pertinent to nuclear forensics and nuclear security.