Thursday, June 02, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

'DIRTY BOMBS': Detection equipment faces tests

Nevada Test Site scientists to evaluate efforts aimed at intercepting radioactive cargoes

Scientists at the Nevada Test Site have begun testing new methods to detect radioactive cargo that terrorists might try to sneak across U.S. borders for use in so-called "dirty bombs" or even full-scale nuclear weapons.

While vendors demonstrated some port-of-entry detection equipment at a temporary facility Wednesday, officials for the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration launched construction of a $35 million nuclear countermeasures center.

With the first pilot units expected to go on line at select locations in the United States in about a year, the technology eventually could be applied at embassies and foreign border crossings, said Michael Carter, chief scientist for Homeland Security's Domestic Nuclear Detection Office.

"The vision is we would share the information and share the technology," he said after a groundbreaking ceremony for the Radiological-Nuclear Countermeasures Test and Evaluation Complex.

When completed in the fall of 2006, the complex will include a system of roads and port-of-entry "choke points," where pairs of tall, rectangular-shaped detection posts will automatically tell if a truck, van, or railroad car, for example, contains natural or man-made nuclear materials.

The site is 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas near the test site's Device Assembly Facility, a low-lying, $100 million fortress where special nuclear materials are stored.

Carter, who previously worked for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said the nation has between 350 and 400 legal ports-of-entry. In all, more than 2,000 portal monitors will need to be installed.

"The real challenge is how sensitive can we operate them," he said.

Carter said one goal of the program is to fine-tune the monitors so they can distinguish between relatively harmless, naturally occurring radioactive materials and threat materials that could be fashioned into lethal nuclear bombs or dirty bombs. Dirty bombs are those designed to disperse radioactive materials to contaminate an area and instill fear and cause illness in people who live there.

On Wednesday, trucks hauling four types of naturally occurring radioactive by-products -- those found in cat litter, fertilizer, tiles and propane tanks with uranium-radon residuals -- rolled past pairs of monitors on a short road where 10 vendors are vying for contracts to produce the detection equipment.

Only two of seven, medium-resolution sodium-iodide detectors will be selected. Likewise, the field of three high-resolution, germanium-crystal monitors will be narrowed to one for use in the $35 million center.

The center will be used to test and refine the technology as well as develop response scenarios for customs inspectors who will train there.

Monitors will be set up at land-based borders, airport customs sites, mail-express courier facilities and potentially at shipping ports for scanning sea-land containers, according to Howard Reichel of the Department of Homeland Security's Research, Development and Acquisitions Office.

Though the technology could be used for assessing cargo leaving the country, "our current focus is on imports," he said.

Jerry Paul, principal deputy administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration, said although the detector technology is decades old, the new program will focus on greater fidelity, greater sensitivity and more flexibility in its applications.

"The next generation of detectors will have applications in all modes of transportation," he said.

Paul referred to the test site as "the great battleground of the Cold War." Similarly, the nuclear countermeasures center, he said, will be "the front line" in the battle to protect America from terrorist threats.

Paul said it is imperative that the technology be perfected and those who operate the monitors be highly skilled and trained to make them work right every time.

After all, he said, "The bad guys with evil in their heads to do harm to innocent people only have to be right once."