Securing our skyways

By Rick Del Vecchio

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are helping the federal government evaluate screening systems that would point the way to narrowing a gap in the nation's aviation security: the risk of a cargo-borne bomb downing a passenger plane.

The threat that a terrorist weapon will escape detection by the nation's 1.5 million shippers and 3,800 freight forwarders makes the air carrier's freight depot the last line of defense against a potential disaster. Because no one method of airport screening is considered adequate for all cargo commodities, the goal is to combine high-tech sensors, canine sniffers and human inspectors while greatly expanding the amount of cargo screened by at least one of these methods.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate and the Transportation Security Administration are evaluating one approach to screening air cargo at San Francisco International Airport, aided by Lawrence Livermore and other national labs. The $30 million Air Cargo Explosives Detection Pilot Program, which includes projects at two other airports, is designed to measure how well existing explosives detection systems, originally developed for screening checked baggage for explosives, perform in screening cargo. The data collected by the program will help the federal agencies shape technological and operational standards for screening at a major air cargo warehouse.

"We're collecting large amounts of data to see what could work," said lab project manager Amy Waters.

The SFO prototype systems include explosives detection systems, explosive trace detectors, stations for physical inspection and staging areas for canine explosives detection teams. Part of the challenge is to see if these approved technologies are appropriate for cargo or if new types of sensors need to be developed.

The percentage of cargo screened has grown since 9/11, but so has the tonnage shipped. A worried Congress, citing the 9/11 Commission's recommendations, has recently passed legislation requiring 100 percent screening of air cargo within three years.

“We’ve been ramping up and we hope to reach 100 percent,” Waters said.

In a separate project, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is working with Homeland Security to develop an industrial-grade system to detect a U-235 or plutonium bomb hidden in a shipping container. The method bombards the container with neutrons, which generate fission and subsequent gamma radiation after hitting the fissile material.

At Los Alamos National Laboratory, scientists are studying how to detect concealed nuclear materials by measuring how cargo deflects cosmic rays. Nuclear materials and shielding materials are more strongly deflected than normal cargo.

The projects to reduce the nation’s risk of being hit by a terrorist weapon concealed in air or maritime cargo are examples of how UC and the three national labs it manages are contributing operational and technological know-how to help the federal government manage the threat of terrorism. The work includes managing the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, analyzing bioagents and pathogens, assessing weapons-of-mass destruction activities by foreign states and modeling military tactics to protect cities, industrial sites and critical U.S. infrastructure against terrorist attack.

Rick Del Vecchio is a freelance writer based in Oakland, Calif.