By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Currently the U.S. Department of Energy’s nuclear terrorism response teams can respond to a potential incident within four hours, but they need to act even more quickly, a senior department official said last week.

“It could take longer than you would like for a Nuclear Emergency Search Team to respond,” John Gordon, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee.  Gordon testified June 26, two days before he was named to head the White House Office for Combating Terrorism.

“Our NEST teams would respond within four hours, and our home teams would respond within two.  That still may not be close enough,” he said.

Gordon was referring to the department’s semisecret Nuclear Emergency Search Teams trained to seek and disarm a terrorist nuclear weapon covertly placed in the United States, and various other teams that monitor, address and analyze possible releases of radioactive material.  The Energy Department has seven types of teams that respond to nuclear or radiological incidents, including teams that monitor the atmosphere for radioactivity and a radiological assistance program that works with state and local authorities, he said.

Gordon said the department, which is restructuring the teams by putting more equipment in the field “so it’s much closer to the users,” is also creating two additional regional bases from which to operate.

Seeking Expanded Capability

In a supplemental appropriations request provided to Congress earlier this year, the department requested an additional $19.4 million over the $90 million it already received for nuclear response programs in fiscal 2002.

The request included a proposal for making a newly created Capital Response Team in Washington — which includes a NEST group — permanent, to add to two response teams already established in Las Vegas and Albuquerque, N.M.  It also included a plan to possibly purchase a Detection Tracking System, which is being tested to determine whether it can use a web of sensors to track the movement of nuclear material through a city.  The department is also seeking to fund an emergency alert system to enable federal teams to alert local first responders to nuclear incidents.

Both houses passed different versions of the bill, including $182 million for Energy “weapons activities,” without specifying how much might go for nuclear incident response.  A House-Senate conference committee is now reconciling differences in the bill (see GSN, May 24).

Gordon stressed that the teams, which have been around for decades, are in place and ready.

“NNSA is prepared to respond immediately anywhere in the world to discrete and specific nuclear radiological incidents and emergencies.  People and equipment are trained, they’re standing alert and they’re ready to respond now,” he said.

NNSA is also working with Customs Service officials to develop tools for more quickly detecting and analyzing information about possible radiological materials smuggled into the country, Gordon said.

Command Change Will Not Hurt Capability

According to a Bush administration proposal sent to Congress last month, the Energy Department teams will probably be incorporated into a new homeland security department, Gordon said.  No problems are anticipated with that change of command, he said.

The teams are composed of 70 full-time responders plus 900 responders on call, most of whose day-to-day jobs are with the department’s nuclear weapons Stockpile Stewardship Program, Gordon said.  NEST groups include technical experts with nuclear weapons design, engineering and safety knowledge gained from working at the national laboratories.  Team members will continue to work at their regular jobs within the Energy Department until activated, according to Gordon.

Since Sept. 11, Gordon said, the Energy Department’s Nuclear Assessment Program has investigated approximately 70 incidents involving “communicated nuclear threats, reports of illicit trafficking of nuclear materials” and conducted “special analysis reports for law enforcement and intelligence components.”

Since 1978, the program has assessed the credibility of more than 60 nuclear extortion threats, 25 nuclear reactor threats, 20 non-nuclear extortion threats, and 650 cases involving reported or attempted illicit sale of nuclear materials, he said.

“Our teams would deploy under the overall direction of the lead federal agency and we do not anticipate that the DOE/NNSA capabilities or response to a nuclear radiological accident or incident would be compromised in any way by this transfer of operational control for specific domestic responses,” Gordon said.

In a separate panel during the hearing, however, Donald Cobb, associate director for threat reduction at Los Alamos National Laboratory, suggested a smooth transition is not certain.

“It has to be clear, when NEST is under the authority of the new department of homeland security, under what conditions it remains under the authority” of the Energy Department.

Under a heightened threat condition, he said, “we need to understand whether we are reporting to the DOE or whether we are reporting to the department of homeland security.”  Roles and responsibilities remain to be worked out, Cobb said, and officials must still “clarify under what conditions these various responsibilities will occur between the departments.”

“Then we need to jointly do exercises and drills and practices so we can understand how this actually plays together and when these assets are needed and they’re called upon,” he said.

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