Global Security Newswire

Lack of a specific material has forced the suspension of a U.S. Homeland Security Department effort to deploy new radiation detectors intended to prevent a nuclear weapon from being smuggled into the country, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, Nov. 17).

The agency to date has spent $230 million on the program to field up to 1,400 of the devices that would scan cargo passing though foreign seaports. However, the $800,000 machines require helium 3 for detection of neutrons, which are emitted by the nuclear-weapon material plutonium. Helium 3 is a byproduct of the decay of tritium, which is produced only in limited quantities in the United States.

“I have not heard any explanation of why this was not entirely foreseeable,” said Representative Brad Miller (D-N.C.). Miller heads the House Science Investigations and Oversight Committee, which is looking into the matter.

The stockpile of helium 3 is estimated to be 10 times smaller than the need, one DHS official told the panel last week.

The detection problem will not go on indefinitely, as separate systems will eventually be readied, according to Steve Fetter, an assistant head of the White House Science and Technology Policy Office. However, there should have been greater awareness that the post-Cold War stock of helium 3 "was a one-time windfall and was not sustainable," he said (Matthew Wald, New York Times, Nov. 23).