Congress Doubts Value of New Radiation Detectors

By Jon Fox, Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. lawmakers have withheld all funding for deployment of next-generation radiation detectors until the Homeland Security Department proves the new monitors are a significant improvement over those currently in place (see GSN, Sept. 27).

Questions about the new technology, known as the Advanced Spectroscopic Portal monitor, are nothing new.  The Government Accountability Office in March noted the considerable cost of the detectors, up to $500,000 per machine compared to $180,000 for the monitors now being used, while questioning the improvements offered by the new technology.

The congressional doubts, however, come just as lawmakers passed a sweeping port security measure that authorizes $3.4 billion in spending over five years and requires all containers at the nation’s 22 busiest seaports to be scanned for radioactive material by the end of 2007 (see GSN, Oct. 2).

Due to the volume of shipments pouring through U.S. ports and the relatively low percentage of containers scanned, government officials have expressed concerns that radioactive or fissile material could be smuggled into the country.  Either could be devastating in the hands of a terrorist group.

Media reports and lawmakers have said that only 5 percent of the 11 million cargo containers entering the United States each year are scanned for radiation. At a recent hearing on Capitol Hill, however, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said 80 percent of cargo coming through U.S. seaports would be scanned by the end of the year.

Still, Congress is weary of the detectors that Homeland Security has heralded as a vast improvement.  Initial testing of the new monitors “indicates the effectiveness of the new technology may fall well short of levels anticipated,” lawmakers wrote in the recently approved fiscal 2007 Homeland Security appropriations bill.

The authors of the bill included language blocking the deployment of the detectors until Secretary Chertoff certifies that the new technology would provide a “significant increase in operational effectiveness.” 

Based on tests of the next-generation system, GAO auditors wrote earlier this year that the technology has not been proven superior, and actually obtaining that proof “currently does not seem certain.”  After a 2005 preliminary test of the next-generation monitors, scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory concluded that the new detectors were “equal to, but no better than” those already in place.

Tests by the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, a branch within Homeland Security, determined the new machines to be better than current monitors in detecting “threat-like” amounts of radioactive material while weeding out naturally occurring sources of radiation, according to the GAO report.  As the amount of radiation-emitting material decreased, however, so did the functional differences between the two technologies.

Current equipment detects radiation without identifying the isotopic signature of the material, meaning that background radiation from common, benign sources often causes false alerts.  Kitty litter, bananas, granite and fertilizer have set the machines off, and the GAO report found such nuisance alarms comprise almost all of the radiation alerts at ports of entry.

Part of Homeland Security’s hope with the Advanced Spectroscopic Portal monitors is that by identifying a source of radiation as the potassium in a shipment of bananas or another harmless material, false alarms can be averted. 

Agency officials have said they expect the newer machines to reduce the number of containers flagged for secondary inspections annually from more than 800,000 to 15,000.

Despite the GAO misgivings about the efficacy and cost-benefit ratio of the new devices, in July the Homeland Security Department announced a $1.2 billion plan to develop the Advanced Spectroscopic Portal monitors (see GSN, July 17).

By 2011, the department plans to deploy 1,400 of the newer detectors at both ports and border crossings.  Some of the 80 ASP prototypes are scheduled for installation beginning in November at the New York Container Terminal in Staten Island, N.Y.  Others would be sent to the testing facilities in Nevada and at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Jenny Burke, a spokeswoman for the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, said the language in the appropriations bill will have essentially no effect on Homeland Security plans for the detectors.  “This is something we had been anticipating,” she said.

The $1.2 billion plan announced in July is part of the department’s fiscal 2006 funding and will pay for research and development by three vendors — Raytheon, Thermo Electron and Canberra — for one year.  DNDO testing of the prototypes and cost-benefit analysis is scheduled for late 2006 and early 2007 and had been planned prior to the congressional mandate in the spending bill, Burke said.

DNDO Director Vayl Oxford has said that the detector deployment strategy includes a mix of old and new devices.  It is unclear, however, if the hold on full-scale deployment of the next-generation equipment would affect installation of monitors at the nation’s busiest ports, something Congress has demanded by the end of next year, Burke said.  “I think that’s yet to be determined.”

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