Radiation Detection Climbing Priority List For Coast Guard

["Nielsen, Erik" <NielseEC@NV.DOE.GOV>]

Radiation Detection Climbing Priority List For Coast Guard

 

  

By ROBERT A. HAMILTON

Day Staff Writer, Navy/Defense/Electric Boat

Published on 2/11/2004



New London - Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is testing equipment for

the war on terrorism that would have been the stuff of science fiction only

a few years ago.



One of the laboratory's program managers, addressing Coast Guard Academy

cadets Tuesday, described a cell phone that scans for nuclear bombs and

automatically calls authorities if it finds one, and hidden gear that probes

shipping containers with a neutron beam that can detect radioactive

material.



Amy Waters, manager of the Department of Homeland Security Radiation

Detection Project at Livermore in Livermore, Calif., said some of the

initial testing results have been encouraging. During a test at a Federal

Express shipping center in Denver, she said, lab personnel found two legal

shipments of radiation source material among hundreds of packages.



"We're taking technology from the lab, or from the brochure sometimes, and

trying to get it to work in the field," Waters said. "We need to start

evaluating these things in the real world."



With almost 7 million shipping containers arriving in the United States

every year, and only about 2 percent of them subject to inspection, the need

to develop radiation detectors has become a top priority of the Coast Guard.



Cmdr. Vince Wilczynski of the mechanical engineering department at the

academy said two cadets did an internship at Livermore last summer working

on the project, and that eight students are enrolled in a new course on

radiation detection.



Lt. Cmdr. Eric Ford noted that the Coast Guard Research and Development

Center at Avery Point, Groton, also has carried out the first field studies

of radiation detectors in a shipboard environment. Its findings have guided

the service as it procures detectors for some of its special weapons and

tactics teams.



Gregg Dixon, who joined the staff 10 years ago after a career that included

four years with the International Atomic Energy Commission and four years

working for Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, the father of the nuclear Navy, teaches

the academy course, and with the local chapter of the American Society of

Mechanical Engineers arranged Waters' visit.



Waters said radioactive material smuggled into this country would not have

to be used in a nuclear bomb to cause significant damage.



She cited a 1987 case in Brazil in which a hospital radiation therapy unit

containing a small amount of cesium 137 was abandoned and stripped by

looters, who dispersed it among friends. Officials were alerted to the theft

when people showed up at the hospital with acute radiation poisoning. The

government had to screen 112,000 people who could have come in contact with

it, and found 250 who were contaminated, 20 requiring immediate

hospitalization. Eighty-five homes had significant contamination, 41 of

which had to be evacuated; several had to be demolished.



A similar amount of material in a "dirty bomb" with just 10 pounds of high

explosive to spread it over a large area, could prompt the evacuation of

9,000 people in San Francisco for at least a year, Waters said.



"If you have highly trained first-responders, with the right kind of

equipment, this will not be a problem," she said. In fact, aside from people

killed by the blast, there likely would be few fatalities.



But the panic would likely lead to a large-scale interruption of life

throughout a region, she said.



"I've heard dirty bombs referred to as 'weapons of mass disruption,' instead

of weapons of mass destruction," Waters said. "The mayhem it would cause

would be extreme."



Waters said the lab is part of a cooperative research project at the Port

Authority of New Jersey and New York, to develop a layered approach to

screening car, truck, rail, marine and air cargo shipments for radiation.



It will take such an approach to cover all the possible points of entry, she

said. Companies that ship material to the United States could be required to

screen for radiation, and radiation detectors could be put on board

container ships, she said. Such detectors could scan for a week or two

during an ocean crossing and report their findings via radio before the

material is close enough to be a threat to U.S. ports.



b.hamilton@theday.com 





Erik C. Nielsen

Senior Scientist

Bechtel Nevada - Remote Sensing Laboratory

P.O. Box 98521, M/S RSL-24

Las Vegas, NV 89193



http://www.nv.doe.gov/programs/frmac/

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