We show that for a nonnegative tensor, a best nonnegative rank-r
approximation is almost always unique, its best rank-one approximation may
always be chosen to be a best nonnegative rank-one approximation, and that the
set of nonnegative tensors with non-unique best rank-one approximations form an
algebraic hypersurface. We show that the last part holds true more generally
for real tensors and thereby determine a polynomial equation so that a real or
nonnegative tensor which does not satisfy this equation is guaranteed to have a
unique best rank-one approximation. We also establish an analogue for real or
nonnegative symmetric tensors. In addition, we prove a singular vector variant
of the Perron--Frobenius Theorem for positive tensors and apply it to show that
a best nonnegative rank-r approximation of a positive tensor can never be
obtained by deflation. As an aside, we verify that the Euclidean distance (ED)
discriminants of the Segre variety and the Veronese variety are hypersurfaces
and give defining equations of these ED discriminants
