Nuclear detectors tested in Nevada desert.

• Author: Pappalardo, Joe
• Position: RADIATION THREATS

The Department of Homeland Security's newest office--dedicated to stopping a nuclear attack on U.S. soil--has begun testing detection devices at ranges in Nevada.

The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, established in April of this year, inherited the project, known as the Advanced Spectroscopic Portal program, from the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency.

HSARPA in 2004 awarded contracts to 10 companies, calling for the development of detectors that can discriminate between naturally occurring radioactive materials and ingredients that could be used to create a nuclear device. Those contracts have been transferred to the DNDO.

The companies have provided prototypes of the detectors that they would like to sell to DHS. DNDO began testing them in August at the Radiological and Nuclear Countermeasures Test and Evaluation Complex at the Nevada Test Site, near Las Vegas, according to Vayl Oxford, acting director of the program. Testing is expected to continue through the end of this month.

Successful vendors will be asked to begin low-rate production of detection systems to be deployed at the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada.

The portal program is among the first concrete steps taken by the new office. The DNDO is part of DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff's effort to reorganize his department to focus upon the most serious threats to U.S. security.

The office will be staffed with DHS technicians and nuclear-detection experts from various state and federal agencies, Oxford said. Cooperation between the office and the various other agencies involved in the counter-nuclear proliferation is voluntary.

Detecting a nuclear device within U.S. borders is not the way that DHS wants to deal with such a threat, Oxford said. The preferred method would be to seize the nuclear material abroad, before it enters the United States, he said.

The DNDO "will not undermine" those efforts, but he cautioned that the United States "cannot rely on that alone."

The portals are just one segment of a massive, worldwide effort to track illicit nuclear materials and keep them away from American soil. Oxford outlined a future counter-nuclear plan with the ability to fuse detection data and intelligence assessments in near real-time.

That effort requires coordination with allied countries, as well as other U.S. agencies, such as the Departments of Defense and State Department, and the FBI, he said.

Coordinating with so many players is a serious challenge...