Are We Prepared to Prevent, React to a Nuke Attack?

Are We Prepared to Prevent, React to a Nuke Attack?

Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Friday, June 21, 2002

This is part three in a series on the nuclear terror threat. See part one: Experts Sum Up Their Fears of Nuke Attack. Part two: Dirty Nukes: Fear as a Weapon.

For those who wonder if other key terror war agencies might be as asleep at the switch as the FBI and CIA on the eve of 9-11, it is comforting to know about our nuclear-event minutemen and women at the Radiation Emergency Assistance Center/Training Site.

REAC/TS is a 24/7 emergency response lash-up headquartered at the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education in Tennessee. There, specially trained cadres of physicians, nurses, health physicists, radiobiologists and emergency coordinators are poised to respond to any and all types of radiation incident, wherever in the nation or the world they may occur.

But don’t relax yet. Just as in the case of parts one and two of this series on the nuclear threat, we have the duty doomsayers to contend with:

‘Not Remotely Commensurate’

"The possibility that terrorists could acquire a nuclear weapon and explode it in a US city is real,” researchers from Harvard University reported recently.

"While efforts to reduce the chances of this happening have been underway since long before last September 11, and have recently been bolstered in some respects, the size and the speed of the US and international response is not yet remotely commensurate with the magnitude of the threat.”

Defining the magnitude of the threat, says the Harvard group, is easy – as easy as smuggling a small amount of nuclear explosives into the United States along its massive coasts and borders.

So what’s lacking exactly in the size and speed of our response?

The Harvard study doesn’t nitpick domestic civil defense as you might expect, but rather looks to what it says the U.S. has left undone overseas – the new "Distant Early Warning” line of defense in the war on terror. The apparent Harvard study motto: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of post-nuclear event rapid response.

After first wondering why – despite the expenditure of all that U.S. aid to harden the defenses of the Russian nuke inventory – simple precautions such as bricking over windows in storage sites in the former Soviet Union remain incomplete, the study lists the following major loose ends:

Loose Ends at the First Line of Defense

Forging a global coalition to secure weapons of mass destruction. Participants would pledge to secure and account for their own stockpiles to stringent standards, cooperate to interdict WMD theft and smuggling, share critical intelligence on these threats, and prepare to respond to WMD threats and attacks.

Appointing one U.S. and one Russian official to lead their respective country's efforts to secure nuclear weapons and materials. No senior official in the U.S. government has full-time responsibility for leading and coordinating the entire panoply of efforts related to securing nuclear weapons and materials. The same goes for the Russian government.

Accelerating and strengthening security upgrades for warheads and materials in Russia. The United States would shift from its "assistance-based approach” to one "based on genuine partnership,” in which Russian experts would be integrated into every aspect of the planning, design and implementation.

Launching a "Global Cleanout and Secure” effort to eliminate or secure stockpiles of weapons-usable nuclear materials. Upgrading security for nuclear weapons and materials in countries with emerging nuclear weapons programs (e.g. India, Pakistan and Israel).

Leading the move to stringent global nuclear security standards. There now are no binding international standards for how well nuclear weapons and materials should be secured.

Accelerating HEU (heavy uranium) blend-down – mixing it with natural uranium until the content of the nuclear explosive isotope (U-235) is below the level required to create a nuclear explosion.

Creating revenue streams for nuclear security. Recommended: a "debt for nonproliferation” swap modeled on past debt-for-environment swaps. Using leverage provided by U.S. veto rights over U.S.-obligated spent fuel going to Russia for processing or storage – to assure that part of the profits from Russia’s spent fuel business go into an auditable fund for nuclear security.

And While on the Subject of Money

The big loose ends above are in addition to other nettlesome issues left hanging, such as:

No infrastructure has been built to create jobs for the tens of thousands of vulnerable Russian and East European nuclear weapons workers who are unemployed or underemployed.

HEU-fueled research reactors scattered in countries around the world remain unsecured.

Accomplishing this ambitious shopping list, of course, requires money that may not be in the coffers. The Bush administration’s fiscal year 2003 proposed budget for cooperative threat reduction efforts is approximately $1 billion, essentially the same as Bill Clinton’s pre-Sept. 11 request for FY ‘01.

Tracking the Fallout

Returning to the grassroots where folks such as our Oak Ridge minutemen operate, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s spokesman Capt. Robert Bennett (U.S.A.) said: "Our Consequence Management Advisory Team has been looking at ways to improve how we support the … response to the detonation of a…nuclear device. We’ve held human behavior workshops and have done modeling and simulation to determine blast impact and radioactive fallout.”

Bennett noted that his agency’s Hazard Prediction Assessment Capability computer program is online to help first responders predict where a radioactive cloud will move, thereby helping them move resources appropriately.

"It can show you what will happen in 20 minutes, then 40 minutes, and so on. We provide this to first responders when they ask for it,” said Bennett. "It was configured to track asbestos particles released from the structures destroyed on September 11th.”

Also operating at the grassroots level these days are the efforts to detect radioactive sources crossing our borders.

"If a nuclear attack comes, it won’t be from an ICBM, but more likely in the hold of a container ship,” warned Paul Leventhal, president of the Nuclear Control Institute in Washington.

Federal agencies are deploying portable cutting-edge detectors that can scan trucks and cars as they pass through tollbooths and sensitive enough to distinguish between a weapons-grade isotope and stray emissions from an X-ray machine.

Customs agents may soon be equipped with newer hand-held detectors such as Berkeley Nucleonics’ SAM 935. Once an isotope causes the sensing crystal to flash on this successor to the venerable Geiger counter, a photosensitive cathode releases electrons into a vacuum tube. Electrical pulses are analyzed by software that can determine exactly which isotopes are present.

Even if a terrorist carries his nuclear stash in a lead-lined suitcase, outfits such as Berkeley Nucleonics can pre-empt with detectors that sense neutron emissions not stopped by the dense metal.

Sound like good news in a world of doom? Don’t bet the bank.

Our ubiquitous doomsayers will quickly point out that there are only 4,000 customs inspectors and that they examine, for example, only 2 percent of those big ship-borne cargo containers entering the country every day.

No Taking Cover

And you can’t get any more deep in the grass roots of nuclear event preparedness than looking to your government for a place to shelter when the nuke balloon goes up.

The bad news in the fallout shelter department is that the new federal Office of Homeland Security is not promoting fallout shelters, according to spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

The reasoning behind the policy has the most to do with dollars and cents, with a little history and psychology percolating in the mix. According to Commander Michael Dobbs, a policy planner on the Joint Staff, an effective shelter program would cost $60 billion, 30 times the cost of implementing a crisis relocation strategy in large cities.

"Evacuation is still the primary protective measure in the event of a nuclear incident,” said Don Jacks of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Edwin Lyman, scientific director for Nuclear Control Institute, has evaluated the state of affairs as nothing less than a return to the primitive Cold War ritual of "duck and cover.”

"If there were a nuclear explosion of relatively small yield, people who are maybe tens of miles away would have something like a half an hour to shelter themselves,” Lyman said. "Does this mean that the U.S. should reactivate a system of fallout shelters? I don’t know.”

Maybe the new, super Department of Homeland Security will re-examine the shelter gap.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Homeland/Civil Defense

War on Terrorism

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