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DOE Aims to Help FBI “Stabilize” Nuclear Weapons By Jon Fox WASHINGTON — The Energy Department has requested money to equip the FBI and other emergency first responders with technology to prevent a terrorist nuclear device from exploding before specialized national teams can permanently disable the weapon (see GSN, Oct. 25, 2005). Such technology is not fully available but there is urgent need to complete its development, Tom D’Agostino, acting administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said this week at a DOE roundtable. “There aren’t tools that currently exist. It’s not like buying fire extinguishers and just handing them out,” he said. “We recognized there was a need in order to respond to a potential improvised nuclear device to have that capability out there.” The Energy Department maintains Nuclear Emergency Support Teams, whose members are experts in identifying and defusing nuclear devices. The teams consist of officials from the country’s national laboratories and are structured for rapid response, but they still would not be at a scene immediately. Until then it would fall to authorities already in the area to deal with the weapon. “There’s a time gap between when something first happens out there in the country and when a group of NEST team folks arrive,” D’Agostino said. The Bush administration’s fiscal 2008 budget request includes new funding to address that gap, although officials are extremely tightlipped about the details (see GSN, Feb. 6). Within the Energy Department’s budget, requested funding for emergency response has increased by nearly 50 percent since fiscal 2006 to more than $145 million in 2008. Included in that is $16 million for something the department calls “stabilization.” Federal officials hope to develop and distribute technology that would allow those first on the scene to somehow prevent detonation until the trained nuclear bomb squad could arrive. The technology would require minimal training, they said. The goal is to develop tools that could be “predeployed” and available to first responders in the area. By first responders, NNSA officials said they are referring more to FBI agents than to local police, fire or medical personnel. The FBI is, under law, the agency responsible for investigating illegal activities involving nuclear material, including any domestic terror threat with an improvised nuclear device. The National Nuclear Security Administration said $15 million was first directed toward stabilization technology in 2006 and indicated that the research has been “promising.” The funding requested for 2008 could result in the production and implementation of first-generation technology, according to budget documents. Exactly how this technology might function, NNSA officials do not know or are not saying. “This is an unknown area I’ll have to admit upfront,” D’Agostino said. The concept of stabilization is to prevent “a device from going from a static state to a kinetic state” until the specialized national teams can arrive, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration. Revealing anything more would veer into the realm of classification, officials said. “I know this is an issue that they’re very interested in, and it’s one they’re holding very closely,” said William Happer, a physics professor at Jay Davis, a nuclear physicist and former director of the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency, said he suspects scientists would direct research toward methods of “freezing” the mechanical and electronic mechanisms involved in triggering detonation in weapon. That could take the form of a microwave generator, said John Pike, a military expert who heads the
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