A report this week gave us more insight into the skimpy security at our borders, and it provided the kind of detail that makes you cringe.
Congressional investigators were able to smuggle enough radioactive material into the country from Canada and Mexico to theoretically make a nuclear weapon or “dirty bomb.” All they needed were a few forged documents secured off the Internet to dupe border agents, who smartly detected the nuclear materials but waved them through when they saw the counterfeit Nuclear Regulatory Commission papers.
Obviously, the nation needs to do more to improve nuclear detection and enforcement at our borders and ports, which is what the General Accountability Office investigators concluded.
The task of monitoring our borders and ports is an enormous one. The NRC, along with the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection, are supposed to keep illicit radiological materials out of the country – all while daily processing 64,000 containers arriving by truck, ship, and rail cars; 365,000 vehicles; and more than 1.1 million people at 380 border crossings.
The GAO report found that only 40 percent of cargo coming into this country is screened and that the technology used is inefficient. Customs plans to install new radiation monitors at seaports, land border and rail crossings, international airports and international mail and courier facilities. But the goal to have them in place by 2009 and to screen 100 percent of the incoming cargo is unlikely to be met, the report said, citing bureaucratic delays and cost overruns.
Clearly, more needs to be done to secure the nation’s borders, including more stringent requirements and more and better screening equipments.
In one critical security improvement, the NRC and Customs are creating a database so border patrol agents can verify the validity of NRC licenses and other documents 24 hours a day.
In addition, lawmakers and experts are urging the Bush administration to adopt screening and inspection methods being used in a pilot project in Hong Kong. In that test, all containers shipped from Hong Kong are scanned by a gamma-ray detector and a radiation monitor. A picture of the contents can be sent around the world for review by officials at the container’s destination port. We were glad to see Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff has scheduled a trip to Hong Kong this weekend to check out the system.
