NUKE MONITORS: LAME

The Department of Homeland Security is spend­ing a bun­dle to install new radi­a­tion detec­tors at ports and bor­der cross­ings. Too bad the things don’t work all that well, Newsday reports.

The devices can screen the con­tents of a truck or ship­ping con­tainer for emis­sions from radioac­tive mate­r­ial that ter­ror­ists might use in a “dirty” bomb to con­t­a­m­i­nate an area, spe­cial­ists said in recent inter­views.
But the chances are low, they said, that such detec­tors, which scan for gamma rays and neu­trons, can pick up emis­sions from a well-​​shielded cache of highly enriched ura­nium — mate­r­ial that could be used in a dev­as­tat­ing nuclear bomb.
The por­tal machines also are prone to nui­sance alarms on ship­ments of many mate­ri­als with low lev­els of radioac­tiv­ity, from kitty lit­ter to bananas, and can be trig­gered by a per­son who has recently received radioac­tive trac­ers in a med­ical pro­ce­dure.
The detec­tors, which must be cal­i­brated to take into account the nat­ural back­ground radi­a­tion from rocks, soil and cos­mic rays, can be set to min­i­mize nui­sance alarms.
“They adjust the detec­tors so the alarms are tol­er­a­ble,” said Page Stoutland, head of a pro­gram for radi­o­log­i­cal and nuclear coun­ter­mea­sures at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. “In doing that, have they made the detec­tor such that it will miss legit­i­mate threats? That’s the con­cern…“
Stephen Flynn, a for­mer Coast Guard co mman­der who is now with the non­profit Council on Foreign Relations, argues that “rather than the super, high-​​end stuff, the money would be bet­ter spent putting radi­o­log­i­cal devices in the boxes.” Small sen­sors, if made cheaply enough, could be placed in every ship­ping con­tainer to mon­i­tor for radi­a­tion and relay data in real time as the ship is still at sea, he said.

August 17th, 2004 | Nukes | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.