Trend: Growing demand for nuclear radiation detectors •U.S. will spend more than $1 billion on new nuclear radiation detectors *•G8 launches new global nuclear tracking system

If you have some money lying around, you could do worse than invest it in companies producing nuclear radiation detection and monitoring devices. Here is why:

—U.S. will spend more than $1 billion on new nuclear radiation detectors

On Friday DHS announced that it was planning to spend some $1.2 billion to buy new nuclear radiation screening machines. Importantly, the new equipment will be deployed not only at airports, seaports, and land border crossings, but will also be used to offer a ring of protection around major urban areas.

Note that sine 9/11 the U.S. government has spent $350 million to install more than 840 radiation detection devices at borders, seaports, and international mail centers. The U.S. government has also contracted with foreign operators such as Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa to operate radiation detection machinery in foreign ports (for example, Freetown in the Bahamas). Most of the detection machinery bought with the money the United States has invested to date relies on crude detection technology used in scrap-metal recycling. In industrial use, it is sufficient for a detection machine to set off an alarm without identifying the exact isotopic source of the radiation. For security purposes this proved entirely inappropriate, as modestly radioactive but harmless substances such as cat litter, ceramic tile, and bananas set off alarms and caused major delays and disruptions at ports. Indeed, the number of alarms is so high, that, on average, screeners have to conduct 831,000 secondary inspections a year, or more than 2,250 a day, at the nation’s ports and border crossings. The only way for port officials to reduce the thousands of false alarms is to recalibrate downward the detection sensitivity of the devices, but this made the detection devices less capable of detecting threatening sources of nuclear radiation.

The new technology, which DHS calls Advance Spectroscopic Portal monitor, simultaneously detects the presence and type of radiation. The department has already awarded contracts totaling $1.16 billion to Meriden, Connecticut-based Canberra Industries; Waltham, Massachusetts-based Raytheon; and Waltham, Massachusetts-based Thermo Electron, to develop the new technology. DHS officials say that the accuracy of the new technology will reduce the number of secondary inspections to about 15,000 a year.

There is one drawback to the new technology: Cost. The new machines will cost about $500,000 each, which is the price of seven of the old detection machines. Still, current DHS plans call for purchasing 1,400 of the new machines by 2011.

—G8 launches new global nuclear tracking system

President George Bush and President Vladimir Putin used the weekend’s annual meeting of the G8 leaders in St. Petersburg to unveil a new global program to track nuclear terrorists, detect and safe-guard bomb-making materials, and coordinate the U.S. and Russia’s responses if terrorists were to obtain a nuclear weapon. U.S. officials said that within months, China, Japan, the major European powers, Kazakhstan, and Australia will join the initial group of nations forming the basis for what is called The Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism. This informal coalition is modeled after the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative, a group of more than seventy countries which coordinate intelligence, law enforcement activities, and operational initiatives to seize illicit weapons as they are transferred across oceans or are transported by air. Much of what is being done under the auspices of the Proliferation Security Initiative is kept secret, but from what is known, more than thirty illicit nuclear transfers have been stopped by member countries. Among the more notable successes of the initiative was the interception four years ago of a German ship bound for Libya. The ship was stopped, brought to port, and centrifuge parts for Libya’s nuclear weapons program were removed. The centrifuge parts were shipped to Libya from Pakistan. It was this interception which convinced Libya that the world would not allow it to build nuclear weapons and persuaded it to give up on its nuclear weapon program, rather than the invasion of Iraq which took place a few months later.

Note that the new Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism goes well beyond the interdictions of illicit trafficking, which is what the Proliferation Security Initiative does. The new initiative will operate inside the borders of countries with nuclear weapons and materials, setting standards for protection and detection, and develop common strategies aimed to deal with terror groups.

The Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism will be more intrusive than the Proliferation Security Initiative, and will need new nuclear detection and monitoring technology to support it.

-read more in David Sanger’s New York Times report

 [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/15/world/europe/15nuke.html?_r=1&oref=slogin]