[ RadSafe ] Radiation Monitoring at Ports, cont'd.

[Gerry Blackwood]

And we are going to do what about all of this? All of this has been hashed out back in March of 2002..... and still we did crap..... 

Dimiter Popoff <didi at tgi-sci.com> wrote:Thanks for posting this article.

It is interesting to see how at least part of the truth makes its way
to the public - eventually. The uselessness of the scintillation based
portals can't possibly have been unknown when they were bought; this
was discussed about two years ago on this list.
I am really curious what "prototype building" takes place in Nevada,
probably it will take them another 5 years to reinvent the wheel and
demonstrate something to match my hi-spec module which has been around
already for quite a while... Anyway, I have received no inquiry so far.
May be I am wrong. May be they work on "improving" the scintillation
based detection systems and the 5 years will go on the discovery
that they cannot beat the laws of physics - so the entire effort will
be as efficient as the star wars project.
I keep on wondering how long it will take until the public realizes
how many semiliterate "experts" get wealthy on such programs and
(worse) are the main obstacle to achieving success which definitely
can be bought at a fraction of the cost.
My optimistic (I can't change my nature...) guess is "forever"...

Dimiter

------------------------------------------------------
Dimiter Popoff Transgalactic Instruments

http://www.tgi-sci.com
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> From: Cehn at aol.com
> Date: Sat, 7 May 2005 14:46:12 EDT
> To: radsafe at radlab.nl
> Subject: [ RadSafe ] Radiation Monitoring at Ports, cont'd.
> 
> 
> May 8, 2005
> U.S. to Spend Billions More to Alter Security Systems
> By _ERIC LIPTON_ (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=ERIC 
> LIPTON&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=ERIC LIPTON&inline=nyt-per) , NY 
> Times
> 
> 
> 
> 
> WASHINGTON, May 7 - After spending more than $4.5 billion on screening 
> devices to monitor the nation's ports, borders, airports, mail and air, the 
> federal government is moving to replace or alter much of the antiterrorism 
> equipment, concluding that it is ineffective, unreliable or too expensive to operate. 
> Many of the monitoring tools - intended to detect guns, explosives, and 
> nuclear and biological weapons - were bought during the blitz in security 
> spending after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. 
> In its effort to create a virtual shield around America, the Department of 
> Homeland Security now plans to spend billions of dollars more. Although some 
> changes are being made because of technology that has emerged in the last 
> couple of years, many of them are planned because devices currently in use have 
> done little to improve the nation's security, according to a review of agency 
> documents and interviews with federal officials and outside experts. 
> "Everyone was standing in line with their silver bullets to make us more 
> secure after Sept. 11," said Randall J. Larsen, a retired Air Force colonel and 
> former government adviser on scientific issues. "We bought a lot of stuff off 
> the shelf that wasn't effective." 
> Among the problems: 
> ¶Radiation monitors at ports and borders that cannot differentiate between 
> radiation emitted by a nuclear bomb and naturally occurring radiation from 
> everyday material like cat litter or ceramic tile. 
> ¶Air-monitoring equipment in major cities that is only marginally effective 
> because not enough detectors were deployed and were sometimes not properly 
> calibrated or installed. They also do not produce results for up to 36 hours - 
> long after a biological attack would potentially infect thousands of people. 
> ¶Passenger-screening equipment at airports that auditors have found is no 
> more likely than before federal screeners took over to detect whether someone is 
> trying to carry a weapon or a bomb aboard a plane. 
> ¶Postal Service machines that test only a small percentage of mail and look 
> for anthrax but no other biological agents. 
> *** 
> Radiation at Seaports 
> One after another, trucks stuffed with cargo like olives from Spain, birdseed 
> from Ethiopia, olive oil from France and carpets from India line up at the 
> Port Newark Container Terminal, approaching what looks like an E-ZPass toll 
> gate. 
> In minutes, they will fan out across the nation. But first, they pass through 
> the gate, called a radiation portal monitor, which sounds an alarm if it 
> detects a nuclear weapon or radioactive material that could be used to make a 
> "dirty bomb," a crude nuclear device that causes damage by widely spreading low 
> levels of radiation. 
> Heralded as "highly sophisticated" when they were introduced, the devices 
> have proven to be hardly that. 
> The portal-monitor technology has been used for decades by the scrap metal 
> industry. Customs officials at Newark have nicknamed the devices "dumb 
> sensors," because they cannot discern the source of the radiation. That means benign 
> items that naturally emit radioactivity - including cat litter, ceramic tile, 
> granite, porcelain toilets, even bananas - can set off the monitors. 
> Alarms occurred so frequently when the monitors were first installed that 
> customs officials turned down their sensitivity. But that increased the risk 
> that a real threat, like the highly enriched uranium used in nuclear bombs, 
> could go undetected because it emits only a small amount of radiation or perhaps 
> none if it is intentionally shielded. 
> "It was certainly a compromise in terms of absolute capacity to detect 
> threats," said Mr. Milowic, the customs official. 
> The port's follow-up system, handheld devices that are supposed to determine 
> what set off an alarm, is also seriously flawed. Tests conducted in 2003 by 
> Los Alamos National Laboratory found that the handheld machines, designed to 
> be used in labs, produced a false positive or a false negative more than half 
> the time. The machines were the least reliable in identifying the most 
> dangerous materials, the tests showed. 
> The weaknesses of the devices were apparent in Newark one recent morning. A 
> truck, whose records said it was carrying brakes from Germany, triggered the 
> portal alarm, but the backup device could not identify the radiation source. 
> Without being inspected, the truck was sent on its way to Ohio. 
> "We agree it is not perfect," said Rich O'Brien, a customs supervisor in 
> Newark. But he said his agency needed to move urgently to improve security after 
> the 2001 attacks. "The politics stare you in the face, and you got to put 
> something out there." 
> *** 
> At the Nevada Test Site, an outdoor laboratory that is larger than the state 
> of Rhode Island, the next generation of monitoring devices is being tested. 
> In preparing to spend billions of dollars more on equipment, the Department 
> of Homeland Security is moving carefully. In Nevada, contractors are being 
> paid to build prototypes of radiation detection devices that are more sensitive 
> and selective. Only those getting passing grades will move on to a second 
> competition in the New York port. 
> Similar competitions are under way elsewhere to evaluate new air-monitoring 
> equipment and airport screening devices. That approach contrasts with how the 
> federal government typically went about trying to shore up the nation's 
> defenses after the 2001 attacks. Government agencies often turned to their most 
> familiar contractors, including Northrop Grumman, Boeing and SAIC, a technology 
> giant based in San Diego. The agencies bought devices from those companies, 
> at times without competitive bidding or comprehensive testing. 
> Documents prepared by customs officials in an effort to purchase container 
> inspection equipment show that they were so intent on buying an SAIC product, 
> even though a competitor had introduced a virtually identical version that was 
> less expensive, that they placed the manufacturer's brand name in the 
> requests. The agency has bought more than 100 of the machines at $1 million each. 
> But the machines often cannot identify the contents of ship containers, 
> because many everyday items, including frozen foods, are too dense for the gamma 
> ray technology to penetrate. 
> *** 
> But given the inevitable imperfection of technology and the vast expanse the 
> government is trying to secure, some warn of putting too much confidence in 
> machines. 
> "Technology does not substitute for strategy," said James Jay Carafano, 
> senior fellow for homeland security at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative 
> think tank. "It's always easier for terrorists to change tactics than it is for 
> us to throw up defenses to counter them. The best strategy to deal with 
> terrorists is to find them and get them."
> 

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