This is a study of the feasibility of and equipment layout for reliable, accurate, and high-speed detection of releases of dangerous substances from nuclear fuel cycle objects by various local and remote laser diagnostic techniques.One of the most dangerous components of accidental releases from objects in the nuclear fuel cycle is volatile uranium hexafluoride, the most chemically active of the known fluorine-containing compounds of uranium. Uranium hexafluoride releases are accompanied by a rapid increase in the atmospheric concentration of hydrogen fluoride and the formation of uranyl fluoride, UO 2 F 2 . In addition, the surfaces of equipment get contaminated by uranium or other characteristic materials, as does waste water. In practice, IAEA inspectors analyze releases, waste water, and water used for washing equipment to discover hidden efforts to enrich uranium or other nuclear technologies.Recently, special attention has been devoted to studies of atmospheric chemistry in a search for the vapor of heavy water, which is a basic constituent of liquid and gaseous releases from most nuclear power stations and chemical plants for the enrichment and reprocessing of nuclear fuel. The presence of superheavy water vapor in the atmosphere may be evidence of plutonium production. Thus, monitoring the atmosphere for heavy and superheavy water vapor is of great interest as it can be used both to establish the degree of contamination of the environment and to detect unsanctioned nuclear weapons production activity.These things have all stimulated a search for new techniques and the development of data and measurement systems for high-speed monitoring of the state of the air basins of large industrial centers, the waters in and surrounding lakes, rivers, seas, and oceans, large stands of plant growth, etc. In creating such systems, laser diagnostic techniques have come to be of ever greater interest, since they can operate at a distance (up to several km), with high sensitivity (ppb) and obtain information about the environment under study in real-time (fractions of a second) [1].In this paper, we describe some techniques and the associated apparatus for reliable, accurate, and high-speed detection of trace releases of dangerous substances at nuclear fuel cycle objects, in both local and remote probe variants employing laser diagnostic techniques.Uranium Hexafluoride. During an accidental release, it interacts actively with the atmospheric humidity to form UO 2 F 2 , which decomposes into uranyl fluoride UOF 4 . The hydrolysis of uranium hexafluoride is usually described by the equations
