- The border patrol has decided to go nuclear against those
who want to sneak barrels of mustard gas, bales of marijuana or bundles
of bucks into the country.
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- Starting early next week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection,
or CBP, agents will start testing a nuclear scanning device, called a Pulsed
Fast Neutron Analysis system (PDF), that will show a border agent the molecular
construction of all materials in an 18-wheeler without the agent having
to open the truck.
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- The $10 million system, which CBP installed in an old
cotton field next to the Ysleta border crossing near El Paso, Texas, shoots
pulsed neutrons through a cargo container's walls. Items in the trailer
react to the mini-bombardment by emitting gamma rays. The machine then
reads the gamma ray signature to create a three-dimensional rendering of
the inside of the container.
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- The CBP's traditional X-ray machines create a two-dimensional,
gray-scale picture that shows the comparative density and shape of items.
A border-protection agent then has to interpret the murky X-ray, just as
a doctor does with a human X-ray.
-
- But the new device's manufacturer, Ancore of Santa Clara,
California, says its Pulsed Fast Neutron Analysis, or PFNA, machine not
only creates a 3-D view -- it actually labels the parts. Thus the system
can be configured to tell CBP officers that there are 100 kilos of cocaine
hidden in a boxful of cheap DVDs or whether a barrel labeled "bleach"
actually contains radioactive material.
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- Doug Brown, a nuclear physicist who now works as Ancore's
vice president of business development, calls the technology a "quantum
leap," comparing its advantages to those of MRIs.
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- "If you have a brain lesion, you can X-ray the hell
out of your head and you will see the sockets for your eyeballs, your jawbone
and your teeth, but you get no clue whether you have a lesion in your soft
tissue," Brown said. "An MRI, on the other hand, is able to locate
that lesion in three dimensions, based on a signature that is different
in the lesion than in the healthy tissue. Our technology works exactly
the same way.
-
- "A lot of threats are packed in barrels. An X-ray
of a barrel would simply show a full barrel but wouldn't tell you it was
full of water, oil or explosives," Brown said. "PFNA can determine
what is in barrels."
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- The technology is not new; it was developed in the late
1990s with federal funding from both anti-drug and antiterrorism efforts.
-
- The technology was never put in place, however, since
it was considered too expensive for drug-detection deployment.
-
- But times have changed, according to Brown. "For
the post-9/11 world, it's a rhetorical question: How safe do you want to
be?" Brown said.
-
- Ancore's champion in Congress is Rep. Silvestre Reyes
(D-Texas), a former Border Patrol inspector chief who has been pushing
for the new technology since 1998.
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- Now, the congressman is "thrilled" that the
Transportation Security Administration, the Pentagon and the CBP have agreed
to sponsor the 90-day test. The TSA will soon be using the technology to
screen cargo that goes into the bellies of commercial airplanes.
-
- "This could be the most powerful technology in our
war on terrorism," said Reye's spokeswoman, Kira Maas. "It really
is incredible."
-
- Despite the availability of new funds for the technology,
Brown emphasizes that his company is working hard with its parent company,
OSI Systems, to make sure that production costs will be much lower than
the price tag attached to its prototype.
-
- Given the current budget deficit and that the border
with Mexico has 42 crossing stations, placing one machine at every land
crossing in the country -- let alone at all the country's seaports and
air terminals -- would be a significant burden on the Department of Homeland
Security's $36 billion budget.
-
- Besides the unit's $10 million price tag, the only other
catch is that, well, the system is nuclear.
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- To keep workers and neighbors safe, drones will pull
trucks into the shed, some employees will have to have radiation badges,
and the locals will have to be protected from radiation gases.
-
- Leading up to the system's deployment, the government
had scientists measure whether neutron-scanned tortilla chips will be too
hot for folks to dip into salsa.
-
- They also had to figure out if the nuclear scanner would
accidentally detonate a nuclear bomb (it won't, but it will detect it and
might accidentally disable it).
-
- The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements
looked closely (PDF) at the system and recommended several measures to
help reduce the risk to employees or neighbors, but did not find the system
to be an unacceptable risk.
-
- Even if every border-crossing station had the neutron
scanner, the sheer amount of commercial traffic crossing the border would
prohibit border agents from inspecting every truck.
-
- Between 26,000 and 30,000 trucks cross the border monthly
at the Ysleta facility, according to CBP spokesman Roger Maier, and agents
will still have to rely on their intuition and training to decide which
trucks will get the neutron treatment.
-
- Still, if the scanner actually is able to accurately
detail the full contents of a truck in about 10 minutes, it could free
agents from the meticulous task of searching the most suspicious trucks
by hand, a process that takes about two hours.
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- http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,6
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