Global Security Newswire

The U.S. Homeland Security Department is curtailing its efforts on a new generation of radiation monitors that were at one point intended to replace the current line of sensors that screen cargo containers coming into the United States for material that could be used in a nuclear attack, a Senate committee announced yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 18, 2009).

The department's Domestic Nuclear Detection Office told Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) that it was ceasing development of the Advanced Spectroscopic Portal monitors for use as primary screening tools at U.S. ports and border crossings, the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee said in a release.

The office hopes to continue working on the ASP monitors for use as secondary screening devices on cargo shipments that have already set off the first round of radiation sensors. However, the "decision does not mean that ASPs will be purchased and deployed to secondary" screening sites, according to a letter to Lieberman from acting DNDO chief William Hagan.

The $1.1 billion ASP effort began in 2005. The new monitors were intended to take the place of the existing portal sensors at all first and secondary screening locations in the DHS Radiation Portal Monitor Program, according to the committee release.

However, the initiative failed "to live up to expectations," the release states. Congressional auditors have found that the ASP system was susceptible to a significant number of false alarms and other technical difficulties.

"The threat of nuclear terrorism cannot be ignored, which is why I’m an advocate for strategic investments to improve our defenses against the smuggling of nuclear materials into this country," said Lieberman, who chairs the committee, in released comments. "Thus, it is unfortunate that four years have been lost on the basic DNDO mission of improving the nation’s existing system of domestic defenses against a nuclear terrorist attack" (U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee release, March 1).