Elite Teams of Scientists And FBI Prepare For Nuclear Terrorism
January 6, 2008
If this is your first time visiting National Terror Alert you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. The National terror Alert feed features breaking news, alerts and bulletins on demand and it's free of charge..
You will only see this message on your first visit to the site. Thanks for visiting!
An elite team of scientists and FBI agents are ready to deploy in a worse-case scenario of nuclear terrorism somewhere in the U.S. It may sound like the something out of a Die Hard movie, or an episode of 24 nut this team is real and they’re ready to respond if called upon.
The Los Angeles Times has more.
About every three days, unknown to most Americans, an elite team of federal scientists hits the streets in the fight against nuclear terrorism.
More than two dozen specialized teams have been positioned to respond to threats of nuclear terrorism, and as many as 2,000 scientists and bomb experts participate in the effort.
And a national policy is evolving that aims to create a system of deterrence in which scientific analysis could quickly identify the state sponsors of an attempted or successful nuclear device attack and enable the U.S. to retaliate. A key report on the approach, known as nuclear forensics, is due in February.
The counterterrorism efforts are becoming routine. Scientists fly over cities in specially equipped helicopters and airplanes using radiation detectors to search for signs of weapons. They blend into crowds at major sporting events, wearing backpacks equipped with special instruments that can identify plutonium or highly enriched uranium.
So far, they haven’t found a terrorist. Near the Las Vegas strip, they investigated a homeless person who somehow had picked up a piece of radioactive material. On the streets of Manhattan, a hot-dog vendor fresh from a medical test triggered a police officer’s radioactivity sensor.
But the teams haven’t become complacent. If the government’s many layers of defense against nuclear smuggling break down, the unarmed weapons designers and physicists, along with experts from the FBI, may be the last hope of staving off a potentially catastrophic attack.
Without hesitation, they are supposed to rush up to a ticking nuclear weapon (or a dirty bomb that would disperse radioactive material) and defuse it before it’s too late — a situation depicted often by Hollywood.
“After everything else fails, we come in,” said Deborah Wilber, a scientist who directs the Office of Emergency Response at the National Nuclear Security Administration. “I don’t believe it is a question of if it will happen. It is a question of when.”
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the office has created 26 rapid-response units. If a nuclear device is found, two other specialized teams would rush to the scene, one from a base in Albuquerque, N.M., where a fueled jetliner is on 24-hour alert. Another FBI team would depart from rural Virginia.
The teams would first try to disable a bomb’s electrical firing system and then quickly transfer the weapon to the Nevada desert. There, the bomb would be lowered into the G Tunnel, a 5,000-foot shaft, where a crew of scientists and FBI agents would try to disassemble the device behind steel blast doors and log the evidence.
- Nuclear Emergency Support Team ‘NEST’ Sent to China Ahead of Olympics - Bill Gertz
- Police Scientists Create Chip That Can ID Bioweapons Quickly
- The Ultimate Threat - CBRN Terror Attack
- Canadian Defence Minister - Dirty Bomb or Nuclear Device Greatest Threat To North America
- U.S. Terror Attack Seen Likely to Follow 2008 Elections
Comments
Got something to say?
Advertisement
Add this Live Alert
