The Government Accountability Office has released another report on DNDO's attempts to replace its current portal radiation monitors with a more advanced detector to cut down on its false (or "innocent") alarms. The Washington Post has this to say:
The new GAO report focuses on another round of testing showing that the new devices perform better than existing equipment when the radioactive material is lightly shielded in something such as a cargo container. That advantage decreased when more substantial shielding such as lead was used, as likely would be the case if a terrorist were trying to import the material, the GAO said.
The GAO report also found difficulties in integrating the equipment at border crossings. In one instance, officials at Customs and Border Protection "suspended field validation of the system after 2 weeks because of serious performance problems that may require software revisions," the report said. The ASPs [Advanced Spectroscopic Portals] were sending more false alarms than the older equipment.
And DNDO has not moved forward on potential techniques to improve the sensitivity of existing radiation detection equipment. If those machines performed better, Congress might be less likely to approve the costlier ASPs, the report said.
Part of DHS's concern is probably that it has federal funds to spend on these new ASPs and Congress has prohibited that spending until this little issue about effectiveness is cleared up. And let there be no doubt, these are expensive monitors. From the GAO report:
Since 2005, DNDO has been developing and testing advanced spectroscopic portals (ASP), a new type of portal monitor designed to both detect radiation and identify the source. The new portal monitors use technology similar to that in handheld identification devices currently used for secondary screening. Key differences from handheld identification devices include a larger number of detectors, more sophisticated software, and a more extensive library of radiation signatures that may provide more consistent and rapid screening and may increase the likelihood of correct identification. DNDO hopes to use the new portal monitors to replace at least some PVTs currently used for primary screening, as well as PVTs and handheld identification devices currently used for secondary screening. However, the new portal monitors cost significantly more than PVTs. We estimated in September 2008 that the lifecycle cost of each standard cargo version of the ASP (including deployment costs) is about $822,000, compared with about $308,000 for the PVT standard cargo portal, and that the total program cost for DNDO’s latest plan for deploying radiation portal monitors—which relies on a combination of ASPs and PVTs and does not deploy radiation portal monitors at all border crossings—would be about $2 billion.2 Moreover, CBP officials expect operation and maintenance costs to be significantly higher for ASPs than for PVTs because of the greater complexity of ASP equipment.
The question has to be, is the cost worth the potential reduction in "innocent" alarms. People who develop CBRN detectors know the golden rule: you can have two of the three following qualities in a detector - inexpensive, sensitive to hazards, and low false alarm rate. You don't get all three. The GAO report uses the port of Los Angeles/Long Beach, through which 45 percent of all sea containers arrive in the United States, as an example. The current portal monitors cause up to 600 "innocent" alarms per day. That's significant, when you consider the time invested in screening millions of containers every year and the delays in processing these false alarms. When you multiply the number of air and sea ports, border crossings, and major cities that DNDO wants to put radiation monitors, it quickly becomes apparent that this is not an affordable concept, even if you believe the alarmist claptrap of people screaming about the threat of nuclear terrorism.
I use quotes around the word "innocent" because it's a new term that I'm not familiar with. Usually, we just say "false positives" when we get a detector that alarms to a material that isn't hazardous. In this case, the report uses the term "innocent alarm" because the monitors are actually alarming to radiation - but it's not fissile material, it's natural radiation in materials such as cat litter. Interestingly, the DNDO trials of the new ASP use as an assumption that terrorists will not try to shield radiological material from detection. It's because they know that if there is anything more than light shielding material, it's going to be highly unlikely that any radiation monitor - current or future - will be able to detect its presence. But hey, when you're desperate to move a program forward regardless of its actual ability to meet your desired goals, you do funny things.
