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Re: Addressing the Unthinkable, U.S. Revives Study of Fallout
Just to add to the scary thoughts
http://www.nap.edu/html/stct/index.html
Gerry
On Fri, 19 Mar 2004 06:31:24 -0800 (PST), "Gerry Blackwood" wrote:
>
> Note: Scary thoughts especially with the FBI as lead..... Gerry
>
>
> March 19, 2004
> Addressing the Unthinkable, U.S. Revives Study of Fallout
> By WILLIAM J. BROAD
>
> o cope with the possibility that terrorists might someday
> detonate a nuclear bomb on American soil, the federal government
> is reviving a scientific art that was lost after the cold war:
> fallout analysis.
>
> The goal, officials and weapons experts both inside and outside
> the government say, is to figure out quickly who exploded such a
> bomb and where the nuclear material came from. That would
clarify
> the options for striking back. Officials also hope that if
> terrorists know a bomb can be traced, they will be less likely
to
> try to use one.
>
> In a secretive effort that began five years ago but whose
> outlines are just now becoming known, the government's network
of
> weapons laboratories is hiring new experts, calling in
> old-timers, dusting off data and holding drills to sharpen its
> ability to do what is euphemistically known as nuclear
> attribution or post-event forensics.
>
> It is also building robots that would go into an affected area
> and take radioactive samples, as well as field stations that
> would dilute dangerous material for safe shipment to national
> laboratories.
>
> "Certainly, there's a frightening aspect in all of this," said
> Charles B. Richardson, the project leader for nuclear
> identification research at the Sandia National Laboratories in
> Albuquerque. "But we're putting all these things together with
> the hope that they'll never have to be used."
>
> Most experts say the risk of a terrorist nuclear attack is low
> but no longer unthinkable, given the spread of material and
> know-how around the globe.
>
> Dr. Jay C. Davis, a nuclear scientist who in 1999 helped found
> the Pentagon's part of the governmentwide effort, said the
> precautions would "pay huge dividends after the event, both in
> terms of the ability to identify the bad actor and in terms of
> establishing public trust."
>
> In a nuclear crisis, Dr. Davis added, the identification effort
> would be vital in "dealing with the desire for instant
> gratification through vengeance."
>
> Vice President Dick Cheney was briefed on the program last fall,
> Dr. Davis said. The National Security Council coordinates the
> work among a dozen or so federal agencies.
>
> The basic science relies on faint clues . tiny bits of
> radioactive fallout, often invisible to the eye, that under
> intense scrutiny can reveal distinctive signatures. Such wisps
of
> evidence can help identify an exploded bomb's type and
> characteristics, including its country of origin.
>
> Solving the nuclear whodunit could take much more information,
> including hard-won law enforcement clues and good intelligence
on
> foreign nuclear arms and terrorist groups. For that reason,
> several federal agencies are involved in the program, among them
> the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of
> Investigation.
>
> The program addresses true nuclear weapons as well as so-called
> dirty bombs, ordinary explosives that spew radioactive debris.
>
> "It's a very hard job," said William Happer, a physicist at
> Princeton who led a panel that evaluated the identification
work.
>
> Mr. Happer said he was worried that a rush for retribution after
> a nuclear attack might cut short the time needed for careful
> analysis. "If we lose a city," he said, "we might not wait
around
> that long."
>
> The effort to fingerprint domestic nuclear blasts is part of a
> larger federal project to strengthen the nation's overall
> defenses against unconventional terrorist threats. Mostly, the
> goal is prevention. For instance, the government recently sent
> teams of scientists with hidden radiation detectors to check
> major American cities for signs that terrorists might be
> preparing to detonate radiological bombs.
>
> In contrast, the identification program seeks to increase the
> government's knowledge and options should prevention fail.
"We're
> trying to resurrect some of our capability," said Reid Worlton,
a
> retired nuclear scientist from the Los Alamos weapons laboratory
> in New Mexico who has been called in to aid the fallout
endeavor.
> "It sort of died. They're not doing radiochemistry on nuclear
> tests anymore, so it's hard to keep these people around."
>
> The effort draws on work that began at the dawn of the atomic
> era. Scientists working on the Manhattan Project built an array
> of devices to monitor nuclear blasts in the New Mexico desert in
> July 1945 and at Hiroshima and Nagasaki a month later. The
> experience helped scientists learn what to look for.
>
> The first hunt zeroed in on the Soviet Union. In the late
1940's,
> military weather planes used paper filters to gather dust
> particles around the periphery of Russia, and scientists in the
> United States who analyzed the data at first sounded dozens of
> false alarms, said Jeffrey T. Richelson, an intelligence expert
> in Washington.
>
> Then, on Sept. 3, 1949, a weather plane flying from Japan to
> Alaska picked up a slew of atomic particles. "That was the real
> thing," Mr. Richelson said. Twenty days later, President Harry
S.
> Truman announced that the Soviets had exploded their first
> nuclear device.
>
> The ranks of fallout investigators swelled during the cold war
as
> foreign nations conducted hundreds of atmospheric nuclear tests.
> By all accounts, the sleuths made many important discoveries
> about the nature and design of foreign nuclear arms.
>
> In time, the ranks dwindled as more and more nations decided to
> move their test explosions underground, eliminating fallout. The
> last nuclear blast to pummel the earth's atmosphere was in 1980,
> and the last known underground test, conducted by Pakistan, was
> in 1998.
>
> As the terrorist threat rose in the 1990's, the government began
> to consider the quandary that would arise if a nuclear weapon
> exploded on American soil. In 1999, Dr. Davis, then head of the
> Defense Threat Reduction Agency at the Pentagon, began an effort
> to address the identification problem by financing research at
> the nation's weapons laboratories, many of them run by the
Energy
> Department.
>
> The first money came in late 2000, Dr. Davis said, and the
> attacks of September 2001 "made it clear that a very organized
> event on a large scale was credible." That perception, he said,
> helped the effort expand.
>
> The secretive work won rare public praise in a June 2002 report
> ("Making the Nation Safer") from the National Research Council
of
> the National Academies, the country's leading scientific
advisory
> group. Having the ability to find out who launched a domestic
> nuclear strike, the report said, could deter attackers and
> bolster threats of retaliation. The report urged that the
program
> go into operation "as quickly as practical" and that the
> government publicly declare its existence.
>
> Since then, weapons laboratories and other federal agencies have
> worked hard on the problem. "They're making progress but they've
> got a ways to go," said Mr. Worlton, the retired Los Alamos
> scientist.
>
> In a drill this year, dozens of federal experts in fallout
> analysis met at the Sandia laboratories in Albuquerque to study
a
> simulated terrorist nuclear blast. Mr. Worlton said they were
> broken into teams and given radiological data from two old
> American nuclear tests, whose identities remained hidden, and
> were instructed to try to name them. Some teams succeeded, he
> said.
>
> Mr. Richardson of Sandia said the laboratory was developing a
> land robot that could roll up to 10 miles to sample fallout and
> return it to human operators for analysis. It could also radio
> back some results if it became stuck. Mr. Richardson said the
> robots, now in development, are to be ready in a couple of
years.
>
> Experts say a new aircraft for atmospheric sampling of nuclear
> fallout is also in development. The Air Force currently has one,
> the WC-135W Constant Phoenix, for such work. It was first
> deployed in 1965.
>
> Weapons experts say getting samples fast is important because
> some radioactive debris can decay rapidly. If captured quickly,
> they can shed light on a weapon's design.
>
> One way of trying to identify a bomb's origin positively,
several
> experts say, is to match debris signatures with libraries of
> classified data about nuclear arms around the world, including
> old fallout signatures and more direct intelligence about bomb
> types, characteristics and construction materials.
>
> "If you're talking about a stolen device, you might try to do
> that," Mr. Richardson said. "But if it's improvised, that's less
> likely to work. It might not look like things you've seen
before."
>
> A further complication is that even knowing who made a bomb may
> say little about who detonated it. In a 1991 Tom Clancy novel,
> "The Sum of All Fears," Islamic terrorists find and rebuild an
> Israeli nuclear weapon and set it off at the Super Bowl.
>
> Federal experts say complex threat scenarios (for instance, an
> American warhead being stolen and detonated in an American city)
> mean that many types of intelligence might be needed for
> successful identification. Over all, it is unclear how much
money
> the government is spending on the effort.
>
> Private experts offered suggestions for improvement. Dr. Happer
> of Princeton, who heads a university board that helps oversee
> campus research, said the program might be cooperating too
little
> with nuclear allies. "It's to our advantage," he said, "for all
> of us to share."
>
> Dr. Davis, the former head of the Defense Threat Reduction
> Agency, made several policy recommendations last April in an
> article for The Journal of Homeland Security. He said the F.B.I.
> should lead the program, presidentially appointed overseers
> should guide it, goals should be set for how long analyses
should
> take and legal issues of prosecution should be examined.
>
> In an interview, Dr. Davis said his suggestions had made little
> headway, partly because of the topic's grisly nature. "This is
an
> ugly subject because your best effort is going to be barely
> adequate," he said. "That's not the kind of phrase people like
to
> hear."
>
> Mr. Richardson of Sandia said that the attribution effort had
> made good technical progress and had already some ability to
> identify an attacker.
>
> "We're hoping for deterrence," he said. "We don't want anybody
to
> think they can get away with it."
>
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