Nuclear Citizenry in Motion

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U.S. Response I: Officers Install Radiation Detectors in Washington, at U.S. Border.Since November, the Bush administration has set up hundreds of radiation sensors on U.S. borders and around Washington in response to concerns that al-Qaeda might be close to obtaining a nuclear or radiological weapon, the Washington Post reported.

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The new sensors, called gamma ray and neutron flux detectors, have been installed in layers at some fixed locations and around “national security special events” such as the previous Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Previously, the only officials that used portable radiation detectors belonged to Nuclear Emergency Search Teams (NEST), which were dispatched when extremist groups claimed to possess radioactive material.

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Because a terrorist group might give no warning before conducting an attack and because NEST scientists are unarmed, U.S. Delta Force commandos have been given the mission to kill or disable anyone with a suspected nuclear device.

The device would then be turned over to NEST scientists to be dismantled. “Clearly … the sense of the urgency has gone up,” said a senior U.S. policymaker on WMD terrorism.“The more you gather information, the more our concerns increased about al-Qaeda’s focus on weapons of mass destruction of all kinds,” said another high-ranking official.

The new sensors do have limitations, however, according to the Post. Those limitations involve detecting radiation at a distance and through shielding. The detectors might also have problems with false positives and false negatives, the Post reported.

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Researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico are working to build new and improved sensors, according to the Post. Some of the new sensor designs would use neutron generators to “interrogate” a suspected object.

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Others would conduct long-range detection of alpha particles, the Post reported.There is consensus that al-Qaeda has obtained the low-level radionuclides strontium-90 and cesium-137, of which many thefts have been reported, according to the Post.

These materials could not be used in a nuclear weapon, but they are radioactive enough to be used in a “dirty bomb,” which spreads radioactive contaminants through the use of conventional explosives.The Pakistani nuclear weapons program might also be a source of nuclear or radiological weapons for terrorists, the Post reported.

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In October, two Pakistani scientists were arrested and questioned about possible contacts with suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden.A third Pakistani scientist is believed to have attempted the sale of a nuclear weapon design to Libya, according to U.S. sources.

It is unknown what Pakistani nuclear weapon design the scientist attempted to sell, whether the sale was successful or what happened to the scientist once the attempted sale was discovered (Barton Gellman, Washington Post , March 3).

MIRVman