Thread: Nuclear Border: The terrorist threat

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Nuclear Border: The terrorist threat

10:00 PM CST on Thursday, November 3, 2005

By BYRON HARRIS / WFAA-TV

Most Texans are aware of the problems the border with Mexico poses for illegal immigration. In the first of a two-part series called The Nuclear Border, Byron Harris has examined a far more dangerous potential: nuclear terrorism.

It doesn't take a look too far back into history to see how tragic the effects of a nuclear weapon can be.

The border with Mexico could be 1,200 miles of opportunity for terrorists to smuggle nuclear materials into the United States. And while an everyday soda can is usually a pretty harmless material, the highly enriched uranium could be the beginning of a nuclear weapon. Smuggled across the border, it could also be a dangerous threat.

So what's protecting you? A piece of plastic might just be the most important barrier between you and a nuclear weapon. That piece of protective plastic is the Radiation Portal Monitor at the Mexican border in El Paso and it measures radiation. The equipment's job is to detect nuclear weapons and any ingredients that could be used to make the device from being smuggled into the United States.

Nuclear Border: More information and resources
"It's called a non-intrusive inspection technique," said Scott Blackhall, with US Customs and Border Protection. "We're reading it for any radiation or nuclear type of materials." U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the system works, but critics have said just the opposite. "They can go through the portal with confidence that they will not be detected," said Tom Cochran, of the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington.

An ABC report said the heart of the issue is a dense, dark and potentially deadly material called highly enriched uranium, or HEU. The material is dangerous because a small amount of it could be used to make a nuclear weapon like the one the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima in World War II killing 140,000 people. Cochran said he is concerned about how plentiful the material is, and how hard it is to detect. "You can run it right through the border," he said. In 2002, Cochran designed a test in cooperation with ABC News to show flaws in the customs system. ABC shipped a small container of depleted Uranium that gave off radiation similar to Highly Enriched Uraniumn in a furniture crate from Turkey.

The shipment went from Istanbul to a warehouse across the river from Manhattan uninterrupted by customs. Customs said it saw the material with an X-ray machine, be didn't sample it for radiation. "Take some simple precautions, the HEU will go right through the system without being detected," Cochran said. He also said any terrorist smart enough to build a bomb would also be smart enough to wrap the nuclear material in lead and ship it in a small metal container, which is what ABC news did. They did it first in the New York shipment, and then a year later shipped it to Indonesia through the port of Los Angeles. However, customs points out that its current Radiation Portal Monitors had not been installed at that time.

A soda can sized chunk of HEU can be the beginnings of a bomb. Ten soda cans worth could make a bomb with the explosive power of 10 kilotons, or 10,000 tons of TNT, which is nearly as big as what the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima. A terrorist bomb may well be on the way to the United States. In a document called the National Planning Scenarios published last spring, the Department of Homeland Security listed the 13 biggest terrorist threats to the United States. First on the list was the nuclear detonation of a 10 kiloton improvised nuclear device. Homeland Security suggested that the bomb would be made from highly enriched uranium smuggled across the border and assembled in the United States.

"The hard part would be getting access to highly enriched uranium," said Matt McKinzie, Natural Resources Defense Council. The most likely source for the material would be the former Soviet Union, which holds at least 500 tons of the material. Border security is the last defense to this form of nuclear threat. But back in El Paso, many trucks never received the X-ray treatment that caught ABC's smuggling attempt. However, customs stressed that it has a multi-layered system. First it checks cargo manifests, and then trucks drive through the Radiation Portal Monitors. If an alarm goes off, the truck is then X-rayed to see what's inside and is sent through a second more sensitive Radiation Portal Monitor.

But there is one potential problem. If a truck doesn't set off the first alarm, the further checks never happen. But that doesn't have the border authorities worried. "As far as I know, these radiation portal monitors will pick up every nuclear material known to mankind right now and will set off an alert," Blackhall said. And while Blackhall may be right, less than a mile away from all the technology the Rio Grande flows. The river is a border breached by undocumented immigrants every day and could be another means to smuggle Highly Enriched Uranium. If soda can sized piece of HEU could be carried by hand across the border, a truck wouldn't even be needed. "The whole system is premised that the smuggler is going to go through the portal," Cochran said. "And of course a lot of smugglers go around the portal."

In testimony before Congress during the summer, two scientists testified that Highly Enriched Uranium could slip past the monitors. Customs again said that won't happen. Still, the agency is making two assumptions at the border. One assumption is that one detector will catch everything, and another is that a terrorist would decide to come into Texas through the customs portals. The problem doesn't stop at the border.

http://www.wfaa.com/nuclearborder/

Few adults who are alive today will ever forget the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York. But a bigger nightmare may be in the making.

The scenario unfolds like this: Over a period of years, terrorists carefully smuggle less than a cubic foot's worth of highly enriched uranium into the United States across the Mexican border.

That material could be used to create a bomb with the explosive power of 10 kilotonsâ€â€