Dispatch from the War on Terra

I’m really trying to get a difficult-to-write post on chemical carcinogens done, and it’s not getting any easier when just plainly bizarre stuff like this shows up in the news. After hearing that government investigators were monitoring private property for nuclear weapons, specifically locations owned by Muslims including mosques, businesses, residences and warehouses, one of my question was would it really work? I guess if there’s anything worse than a warrentless intrusion on peoples’ privacy, though some think it’s perfectly ok, it’s an ineffective warrentless intrusion. At least someone in the media is on the job, though there are those who think this constitutes blowing the cover of an important domestic surveillance program.

You would think there would be some demonstrable effectiveness to the monitoring program because it’s being carried out by DOE’s (or DHS’s – I can’t keep track any longer) Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST). But I wonder now. News articles going back a couple of years have raised questions about the effectiveness of radiation detectors for finding smuggled bomb-grade material: For example, a 2002 article from the National Journal, and republished by nti.org, quoted Frank von Hippel, physicist and professor of science policy at Princeton University as saying that under ideal conditions, it is possible to detect a nuclear weapon from more than 200 feet away. However, factors such as shielding, natural radioactive background and the fact that uranium and plutonium are not strong emitters of external (gamma) radiation, might reduce the effective of detectors. Another story in 2004 reported that the radiation detectors, which scan for gamma ray and neutron emissions and used at ports and border crossings to detect smuggling of nuclear materials, were ineffective and prone to nuisance alarms. Also cited in the 2004 story was a Stanford University study that concluded that with all aspects of port security, including radiation detectors, there is less than a 10-percent chance of border and customs inspectors detecting a shielded nuclear weapon transported by an unknown carrier, increasing to a 24-percent chance with a certified shipper.

A more recent paper published by the Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation states flatly, “Fixed detectors, portal, and NEST teams won’t work for shielded HEU* on a national scale; a distributed network of in-vehicle detectors is also necessary to deter nuclear terrorism.” This October 2005 paper concluded:

Calculations of a link budget for passive detection of HEU and Plutonium (Pu) show that using emitted gamma rays and neutrons is physically limited by the sharp attenuation of its radioactivity with distance/shielding (2-4 feet or less) and the time required to count a sufficient number of particles (several minutes to hours), although Pu may be easier to detect than HEU.

Of course, we don’t know (and rightly so) what the surveillance teams are using as detection devices. Passive methods are likely being use, but what else? Air sampling? Soil sampling? These appear to be more useful for detecting facilities for manufacturing weapons-grade nuclear materials and fabricating weapons, activities that are likely to leave radioactive particles strewn about or produce emissions to the air (see here, here and here). So, unless there’s something about the detection technology not disclosed to those of us without the need-to-know (always a possibility), there is reason to question what these needle-in-a-haystack clandestine surveys have accomplished other than to demonstrate the Bush Administration’s willingness to do something else that is seemingly both paranoid and pointless in the name of the “war on terra”.

Meanwhile, actions that might have some real effect on nuclear terrorism, such as improved port security and international nuclear non-proliferation activities, suffer from neglect.

*HEU – highly-enriched uranium