Homeland Security Watch

Much of the analysis of the Fukushima nuclear crisis, both the tick-tock of events at the plant itself and the re-evaluation of nuclear reactor safety and response plans here in the U.S., has treated the subject as if it was an isolated incident. This ignores the triggering event, a 9.0 earthquake and resulting monster tsunami, along with the true utter death and destruction that resulted as opposed to the ongoing radiological situation that has yet to kill one person (the brave people working to get the situation under control have likely been exposed to high enough doses of radiation to increase their chances of developing cancer, but at this point outside the plant it likely will be difficult to identify any increased cancer rates).

This is not generally the best of ideas, either for understanding decisions made by the utility that owns and operates the Fukushima plant and Japanese authorities or in analyzing our own safety efforts and crisis response plans (never mind the fact I’ve seen significantly more concern raised about nuclear safety than questions about our own ability to deal with an event that kills tens of thousands and displaces hundreds of thousands of people).  That said…I’m about to commit the same mistake, because like in physics it is sometimes easier to treat a real physical object like a car as if it were a pure geometrical shape (such as a sphere) just because it makes the math easier. In other words, sometimes important insights can still be gained by simplifying a situation.

In this case, I’m thinking about the similarities between the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and spill and the ongoing troubles at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.  Both are technical disasters that impact people and the environment with possible long-term effects to which there has been a confused response.  In a recent Boston Globe op-ed, former DHS assistant secretary Juliette Kayyem reflects on her experiences in the Gulf:

In hindsight, it’s clear to me that there were two different responses to the spill — one political, one operational. Despite some fits and starts, the operational response largely worked. But it was the political response that garnered so much attention, and seemed so disconnected from what was going on day-to-day operationally.

The operational response, led by Thad Allen, occurred in the field. Countless Coast Guard officials, environmental cleanup crews, BP engineers, and state and local first responders focused on closing the well; used 1.8 million gallons of dispersants on the surface and sea bottom; burned oil when it surfaced; protected marshlands with protective boom; skimmed oil if it was near shore; and cleaned up tar balls when oil hit the shore.

Yet, the whole time, we were playing by a rulebook that no one could admit we were playing by. This was true not just for the White House, but for the governors and local leaders as well.

Even putting aside BP’s public-relations fiascos — former CEO Tony Hayward wasn’t the only one who wanted his life back — the notion that the US government would stand hand in hand singing “Kumbaya” with BP as we worked together to fight the oncoming oil was absurd. Thus, Thad Allen would become the voice and leader of the response, BP would be kicked off the podium (literally: their daily press briefings with the Coast Guard were canceled)

Not one of the Gulf governors — all of them Republican, at least two potentially running against President Obama in 2012 — would accept that his own experts had signed off on plans that, essentially, they no longer liked in the harsh light of day.

In a democracy, any disaster is inherently political. This isn’t a criticism. The administration did, in my view, what any compassionate and concerned administration ought to do; the governors would similarly defend themselves. And maybe first responders are too quick to criticize elected officials for involving themselves in major disasters; leadership is what we elect them for. They can assign blame, demand resources, and channel popular outrage in a way a by-the-book field response cannot.

On the other side of the Pacific, the story sounds eerily similar.  The Wall Street Journal has been carrying out some of the best reporting on the management of the Fukushima crisis:

Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which oversees the country’s top nuclear regulator, said Friday said it will run Tepco’s main daily plant-status briefing, held each evening, though the company will conduct some others on its own.

Tepco came under another indirect attack Friday, as the governor of Fukushima prefecture, or state, vowed he would oppose any efforts to reopen parts of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, as well as a neighboring Tepco-run plant, until he was assured of their safety. While he has limited ability to block any reopening, his comments underscore the rising local opposition to nuclear power in Japan.

Tokyo’s intervention in Tepco’s public-relations arm came after several briefings that sowed confusion, with Tepco issuing statements on radiation levels that it later rescinded or revised, or that appeared to catch Tokyo by surprise at briefings often held at around the same time of day.

The move deepens the government’s involvement in Tepco. After the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that led to dangerous reactor overheating at the plant, Prime Minister Naoto Kan ordered advisers to set up a command center in Tepco’s offices. The government has since moved to quash speculation, amid questions over Tepco’s ability to shoulder potential liabilities over the disaster, that it would nationalize the company.

“Under the current configuration, it is not clear who is calling the shots and who is taking responsibility,”

To bring it all together, Ben Heineman, former General Counsel of GE (among his many professional accomplishments), highlighted the similarities between the two incidents in a Harvard Business Review piece:

A potentially catastrophic technological problem, an incomplete crisis response plan, misleading early information, divided private and public authority, ineffective initial actions.

This could describe the current situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and its six reactors. But, it also describes what happened after the April 20, 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

These two unprecedented events are stark reminders that effective crisis management involving complex science and technology is wholly dependent on well-thought-out — and actively practiced — crisis response plans. Of course, such plans will have to adapt to actual events, but without a robust plan, “seat of the pants” crisis management won’t work.

Although the Japanese nuclear event is not yet a week old and information is impressionistic and fragmentary, it bears a striking resemblance in a number of dimensions to the Gulf spill

Response Plan. Neither the Gulf spill nor the problems at the Japan nuclear plants were unthinkable.

Public or Private Responsibility? The U.S. government initially left many dimensions of crisis management and response to BP. But, the Gulf spill was a national issue, which required governmental direction, responsibility and accountability.

In Japan, although the government has taken the lead on many aspects of the post-earthquake/tsunami crisis, there has been confusion about who is in charge at the nuclear plants. Where is the central government? Where is the nuclear regulator?

Confusing Information. A host of factual questions were raised by Gulf Spill: How much oil was flowing? How could the flow be stopped? Where was the oil going (surface/sub-surface)? How could it be contained or removed? How could damage to environment/people/property be eliminated or mitigated? But for a significant period of time, responses from the company and the government were confusing. The U.S. government needed a central authority which used expert working groups, and which made clear to the public what was known, what was unknown, what process was in place for improving knowledge, and when there would be regular updates on those issues. A similar set of problems bedevils Japan.

Decision-Making Processes. As noted, there was substantial confusion for weeks after the Gulf spill about whether the company or different parts of government were making decisions.

A similar concern appears to apply in Japan, where opaqueness prevails about who is making decisions about what options, with what parties at the table, and with which other parties advising (from around the world).

Implementation and Resources. In the Gulf, there were also serious issues about which private and public sector actors would implement which decisions — and about what resources were necessary.

In Japan, it is very hard to tell at the moment who is responsible for carrying out which decisions at the nuclear plants.

It is still too early to draw any definitive lessons from what is happening in Japan.  Yet the basic similarities so far identified between these two events  should give pause to all regulators and emergency planners.

Two days ago, Homeland Security Watch’s own Chris Bellavita pointed out in an email that “baseball season starts tomorrow and to me that means the homeland is safe.”  As a baseball fan whose pulse quickens at the phrase “pitchers and catchers report,” all I could think was: amen.

Whatever the correct analogy–I need an extended spring training; I belong in the pundit minor leagues; I am simply a replacement-level commentator–I realize that I am simply not in the George Will-class of baseball loving opinionators.  That said, I still cannot resist attempting to make another connection between baseball and homeland security.

The baseball season is long, so there will be ample time to tease out general connections between what is required to win on the diamond as well as succeed in this amorphous thing we call homeland security. However, one aspect of the game struck me as particularly timely in terms of news out of Japan–the importance of having a “Plan B.”

In baseball, one can hope that a team’s starting players will go the entire season without losing much time to injury.  This happens, albeit rarely, and when it does the team involved (assuming the players were good in the first place) does well.  Most often, this just doesn’t happen and a good team has a smart general manager who considers this possibility before the season begins and takes steps to mitigate the risk.

It would seem obvious that baseball teams would plan for contingencies involving losing a couple starting players for a period of time.  Yet it involves variables not easily managed, as the most useful bench players when regulars are healthy are not always the optimal choices to fill-in for a starter over the long term, as well as juggling competing priorities at the minor league level (i.e. whether to develop prospects or stock back ups). It is easy to plan for the best case and hard to manage risks involved with the worst:

Assembling a 25-man roster is fairly easy for most general managers, especially for a team with financial resources.But finding the depth to combat injuries requires creativity.

“You have to plan for injuries because they happen every year,’’ said Epstein. “You try and plan for the worst-case scenario and adjust to the best-case scenario. It’s by trying to create redundancy.

Some obvious lessons for homeland security planning in general.  Yet, just as in baseball, this balance between best and worst case scenario planning can be difficult in even the best prepared of countries–or simply ignored.

Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s disaster plans greatly underestimated the scope of a potential accident at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, calling for only one stretcher, one satellite phone and 50 protective suits in case of emergencies.

Hard to believe, but it seems that in a nation often lauded as among the best, if not the best, in terms of preparation for a natural disaster simply dropped the ball regarding catastrophic planning for nuclear facilities. More from the Wall Street Journal article describing the lack of proper planning:

Disaster-response documents for Fukushima Daiichi, examined by The Wall Street Journal, also contain few guidelines for obtaining outside help, providing insight into why Japan struggled to cope with a nuclear crisis after an earthquake and tsunami devastated the facility.

There are no references to Tokyo firefighters, Japanese military forces or U.S. equipment.

The main disaster-readiness manual, updated annually, envisions the fax machine as a principal means of communication with the outside world and includes detailed forms for Tepco managers when faxing government officials.

Much hinged on the fax machine. One section directs managers to notify the industry minister, the local governor and mayors of nearby towns of any problems “all at once, within 15 minutes, by facsimile.” In certain cases, the managers were advised to follow up by phone to make sure the fax had arrived.

Obviously one could take up several blog posts to simply unpack these and other related revelations. Undoubtedly, other Japanese efforts at disaster readiness saved thousands, if not tens of thousands, of lives following the earthquake and tsunami.  I have serious doubts about the current ability of the United States to manage a similar size catastrophe–both the immediate impact and long term consequences.  And I agree with Phil that the nuclear crisis is needlessly overshadowing the larger natural disaster.

Yet it still boggles the mind that a society so prepared could allow such a substandard state of planning to exist.  The current disaster would not have been avoided if much of the response plan had been improved–only moving the back-up generators to higher ground would have saved the plant from the loss of power that initially drove events.  However, this disaster did underline the deficiencies in planning and hints at the difficulties that it caused in responding to this maximum of maximums event.

What the managers of the Fukushima plant failed to do was honestly consider even a bad, never mind worst, case scenario.  The level of planning appears to be equivalent to losing your back-up catcher or utility infielder for half the season.  Would it be inconvenient?  Absolutely.  Would it derail a season?  Not a chance.  Perhaps planning for an earthquake and resulting tsunami stronger than the reliable historical record indicates would not have been feasible before current events.  But the existence of a decent Plan B may have helped ameliorate the consequences of this Godzilla-esq black swan that fell on the people of Japan.

While  most of the world’s nuclear attention is on the efforts underway to regain control of the troubled Fukushima reactors and spent fuel pools, some analysts are suggesting steps to prevent future accidents and beginning to predict the impact of the current crisis on the nuclear future. Harvard professor Matthew Bunn writes in the Washington Post about the need for a new way of performing safety inspections:

Every country operating nuclear facilities needs to undertake an urgent review — by an independent international team, not by the companies that own the plants or the agencies that have long regulated them — of whether there are risk-reduction steps as compelling as those the academy recommended that have not been taken.

He also points out the need to take security and not just safety into consideration:

The risk is not just accidents but attacks. Al-Qaeda has repeatedly considered sabotaging nuclear facilities. The 2006 study focused primarily on the danger that terrorists might succeed in draining the water from a spent-fuel storage pool, the same outcome raising risks in Japan.

Nuclear facilities around the world are much less prepared for security incidents than for accidents. While U.S. reactors are required to have armed guard forces, many reactors abroad — and even some sites with potential nuclear bomb material — have none. One senior U.S. nuclear official I spoke to last fall described security for most of the reactors he had visited abroad as “frightening.”

You can read the entire piece here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-we-can-reduce-the-risk-of-another-fukushima/2011/03/23/ABpyI3KB_story.html

In a similar piece in the New York Times, Princeton physicist Frank N. von Hippel suggests that oversight of the nuclear industry in this country isn’t up to snuff:

Yet despite the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has often been too timid in ensuring that America’s 104 commercial reactors are operated safely. Nuclear power is a textbook example of the problem of “regulatory capture” — in which an industry gains control of an agency meant to regulate it.

As a result of weak regulation, Hippel points to a potentially precarious situation concerning spent fuel pools in this country:

More recently, independent analysts have argued, based on risk analyses done for the commission, it is dangerous for the United States to pack five times more spent fuel into reactor cooling pools than they were designed to hold, and that 80 percent of that spent fuel is cool enough to be stored safely elsewhere. It would also be more expensive, however, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission followed the nuclear utilities’ lead and rejected the proposal.

Praising the staff at the NRC, Hippel instead suggests that these issues begin and can be solved at the top:

Therefore, perhaps the most important thing to do in light of the Fukushima disaster is to change the industry-regulator relationship. It has become customary for administrations not to nominate, and the Senate not to confirm, commissioners whom the industry regards as “anti-nuclear” — which includes anyone who has expressed any criticism whatsoever of industry practices. The commission has an excellent staff; what it needs is more aggressive political leadership.

Even before the nuclear events unfolding in Japan there was little chance that many new nuclear power plants were going to be built in the United States.  Not due to fears of meltdowns and radiation releases, or even concerns about long-term storage of nuclear waste, but because the economics just didn’t (and still don’t) make sense.  With fossil fuel prices so low, there are few incentives for anyone to provide the money to cover the high construction and other start up costs that come with nuclear power plants.

This is not the case in other nations that have laid out plans for aggressive nuclear power expansion in recent years.  For an informed view of the potential impact of the current crises on these efforts in China, Russia, South Korea, India, and Iran, I recommend reading “The Global Future of Nuclear Power after Fukushima” in which researchers from those particular nations provide their views.

An illustrative graphic, below, describing “the ionizing radiation dose a person can absorb from various sources” — from sleeping next to someone through spending ten minutes next to the Chernobyl reactor core after meltdown.

The chart’s creator, Randall Munroe, warns people that he is not a radiation expert, and “If you’re basing radiation safety procedures on an internet PNG image and things go wrong, you have no one to blame but yourself.”

You can click on the image below to view a larger version of the chart.  Even better is to look at the original chart at this link: http://xkcd.com/radiation/

[Thanks to Maj Gordon Hunter, 8th Civil Support Team (WMD) for the lead.  He asks how come "no one in the media has yet actually quantified what 'a large amount of radiation' is?  100 Alpha particles?  A chunk of Cobalt 60 the size of one's head?  The background rad being reported on the [Japanese] reactor is actually less than the background normally found in Colorado just by walking outside.  Sometimes, knowing the math behind rad can make life hard on your TV (being shouted at, things flung into, etc).”]

Carl Sagan’s words about science echoed today as I tried unsuccessfully to think about what is going on in Japan.

“We have … arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”

If what happened in Japan were a table top exercise, no one would allow the scenario to be used.

“OK, first we’ll do a huge earthquake; bigger than anyone has ever seen before.”

“Right. Then comes the tsunami.”

“Excellent, and we make sure the waves also hit another continent.

“Perfect. And the earthquake is so massive it knocks the earth off its axis.”

“What?”

“Right. That’s too much. How about this. We blow up a nuclear power plant.

“Outstanding. Make it three power plants and maybe we really have something.”

—————

Quotes from one of the hundreds of news reports:

“People are suppressing hunger with instant noodles or rice balls.”

“Not much was left when search-and-rescue teams finally reached Natori on Monday. There was searching, but not much rescuing. There was, essentially, nobody left to rescue.”

“People are surviving on little food and water. Things are simply not coming.”

“We have repeatedly asked the government to help us, but the government is overwhelmed by the scale of the damage and the enormous demand for food and water.”

“We are getting around just 10 percent of what we have requested.”

“We have requested funeral homes across the nation to send us many body bags and coffins. But we simply don’t have enough.”

“We just did not expect such a thing to happen. It’s just overwhelming.”

“We are patient because everyone in the quake hit areas are suffering.”

“I’m giving up hope.”

“I never imagined we would be in such a situation.”

“I had a good life before. Now we have nothing. No gas, no electricity, no water.”

“All my other relatives are dead. Washed away.”

—————

I was on the US east coast when the earthquake hit. I heard that by 11 AM eastern time, the US west coast would get hit by waves that traveled 500 miles an hour. I live about an hour from the Pacific Ocean. My family will be ok.

But still. How could that be?

Then Sagan’s voice again: “… almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.”

—————

More quotes from news reports:

“…radioactive releases of steam from the crippled plants could go on for weeks or even months…. More steam releases also mean the plume headed across the Pacific could continue to grow. The White House sought to tamp down concerns, saying modeling done by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had concluded “Hawaii, Alaska, the US territories and the US West Coast are not expected to experience any harmful levels of radioactivity.”

I am never comforted by passive voice sentences. But it’s the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). They ought to understand this stuff. I certainly don’t.

So I went to the NRC’s website, because people who read blogs go to websites to learn things.

The site is http://www.nrc.gov/. The home page had a picture of 3 men in ties and one woman staring at paper on a desk. Maybe its a stock photo. The caption under the photo says:

“The NRC has been monitoring the Japanese reactor events via its Headquarters Operations Center in Rockville, Md., on a 24-hour-a-day basis. MORE”

Click on MORE and you download a one page press release that says toward the end:

“The NRC will not comment on hour-to-hour developments at the Japanese reactors. This is an ongoing crisis for the Japanese who have primary responsibility.”

Good policy decision. For 1955 maybe.

But I want to give the NRC the benefit of the doubt. I’m sure they are busy.

They do offer a link to their “Emergency Preparedness and Response” page:

The vapidity of the prose on that page makes me long for ready.gov (whose main page provides links to information about tsunamis, flooding and the 2011 national level exercise).

I’ll look at that later. Right now I want to know more about how the west coast is “not expected to experience any harmful levels of radioactivity.”

—————

I know water traveled from Japan to Oregon at 500 miles an hour. I know weather travels from west to east. I know something called “radioactive steam” is being released and may continue to be released “for weeks or even months.” I also know first reports are frequently wrong. But I want to do my part as a prepared citizen.

What if the modeling and the passive voice sentences are wrong?

What if some crap in the atmosphere modified by the word “radioactive” makes its way across the Pacific?

I know with almost moral certainty that’s not likely to happen. Just as I know with almost moral certainty terrorists will not attack the elementary school a mile from my house. And the creek in my backyard is not going to flood and sweep my house away. One — a person, a community, a nation — accepts certain low probability, high consequence risks.

“We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces,” Carl Sagan tells me.

—————

The NRC’s “Emergency Preparedness and Response” page seems to be mostly information for people who live near nuclear power plants.

In 2011, does living on the same planet as Japan mean I now live near a nuclear power plant?

No, says the NRC.

I have to be within a 10 mile radius before the page will speak to my concerns.

—————

I do a little more reading on the NRC page and see something about potassium iodide.

You can learn about obtaining potassium iodine, which reduces the absorption of radioactive iodide, by contacting your State or local government’s emergency organization (see FEMA’s State Offices and Agencies of Emergency Management ). Potassium iodide can also be purchased from local pharmacies. You can learn more about the Use of Potassium Iodide on NRC website.

“Reduces the absorption of radioactive iodide.” OK. That’s got to be a good thing.

So I follow that link and read:

If taken properly, potassium iodide (KI) will help reduce the dose of radiation to the thyroid gland from radioactive iodines, and reduce the risk of thyroid cancer. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued guidance on the dosage and effectiveness of potassium iodide.

The NRC provides this link to a PDF document on the FDA website.

Click on that link and this is what you see:

Page Not Found

Our apologies. The link or location you used does not exist or was moved.

Clicking on the other NRC links does not immediately provide any more useful information — whether from federal resources or from my state.

I know as this “event” continues to evolve, the national knowledge construction machine will triangulate a coherent story about any radiation threat and what to do — if anything — about it.

But I want to do something now.  See something, do something.

—————

I’m not panicking. But I am being ignorant — in (I hope) a good way. I lack knowledge about the potential effects of radioactive stuff mixing with the Oregon rain and falling on my children.

Probably never going to happen. Not in a million years. But still, I do like to be prepared. Just in case.

One of the mantras from my special event days came back to me: “It’s better to have something and not need it, than to need it and not have it.”

I’ve done enough research for today. Time to get some potassium iodide.

—————

I know I’m never going to need it, but the NRC site did say “Potassium iodide can also be purchased from local pharmacies.”

I went to the health food store first. Then one pharmacy. Then another. Then a third.

All out.

Seems there may have been a small run on potassium iodide.

“We have more coming in tomorrow,” one guy told me. “I’ll call you when we get it in.”

A pharmacist at a national chain store stuttered when I asked.

“People have been asking about that. It must be for that…. that thing”

She couldn’t think of the word. Or maybe she didn’t want to say it. I didn’t say anything either.

Then — like the first time you go through a back scatter device at a TSA checkpoint — I surrendered.

“That ‘radiation’ thing?”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “That radiation thing. We don’t carry it. You want me to call the store manager?”

“No thanks,” I said, wondering why she asked me that.

I checked its availability on Amazon.

Crooks! Gouging!” shouted one (somewhat factually inaccurate) reviewer published on Monday. “This is OBSCENE! These pills go for 5 dollars per pack. Even l0 would be too much. Just this morning they jacked it from 9 to 49 and 10 minutes later… jacked it up to l00 dollars. They jacked it up twice in less than an hour.”

Interesting.  An internet panic?

Am I contributing to prudent preparedness or ignorant panic?

—————

Since last autumn, FEMA has been talking about changing planning assumptions from whatever they are now (I think all hazards) to something called “whole community” and “maximum of maximums.” For an example, see http://blog.fema.gov/2010/12/70-earthquake-in-midwest-planning-for.html

The slightly Freudian acronym for “maximum of maximum” is MOM. Perhaps MOM was meant to be somewhat comforting. Or disturbing.  Or confusing.

The National Level Exercise in May will use a maximum of maximum assumption to simulate a major earthquake along the New Madrid fault.

FEMA’s whole community strategy “is built upon a foundation of a meta-scenario consisting of the maximum of maximum challenges across a range of scenarios.”

Maximum of maximums (or maximax) is also a decision science term, referring to a “strategy … that prefers the alternative with the chance of the best possible outcome, even if its expected outcome and its worst possible outcome are worse than other alternatives.”

That definition takes a bit of unpacking before meaning emerges.

FEMA is less abstract about MOM. They are talking about an event that

- Affects about 7 million people

- Covers 25,000 square miles

- Affects several states and FEMA regions

- 190,000 fatalities in initial hours

- 265,000 citizens require emergency medical attention

- Severe damage to critical infrastructure

- Severe damage to essential transportation infrastructure

- Ingress/egress options limited.

—————

I went to a conference last week where FEMA leaders talked about their new strategy. I think they are waiting for President Obama to sign a new national preparedness directive before they make a really big deal about this change.

There were a few dozen experienced emergency management and homeland security professionals in the room when the FEMA representatives talked about “whole community” and “maximum of maximum.”

My sense was some people did not understand it. Some people understood it and liked it. Other people understood it but were concerned that now states and cities would have to change their planning assumptions (again).

I’m not sure I understood all of it. But today, FEMA’s definition of MOM does not go far enough for me.

It says nothing about the earth moving off its axis.

Forgive the shameless self-promotion, but I have a short opinion piece on dirty bombs up at the “Power & Policy” blog.  Basically, it argues that there has been too much focus on preventing a dirty bomb attack through detection efforts.

While useful as part of an overarching strategy, detectors are likely to fail as the primary means in preventing a dirty bomb attack.  Sensors at the border are useless against radioactive materials acquired inside the U.S.  Detectors deployed along highways and other transportation routes are similarly ineffective against radiation sources stolen within the target city.  Technology currently deployed will register false alarms caused by shipments of bananas, kitty litter, and other naturally radioactive substances.  In recent years, both a retired police officer in New Hampshire and a cat in Washington State caused radiation detectors to alarm on highways due to medical treatments they received.  Needless to say, neither “radioactive” patient was a terrorist.

So what is a viable alternative strategy?

If a dirty bomb cannot be prevented, what should be done about the threat?  First, the worst radioactive ingredients should be secured.  Second, to avoid the fear that will cause the real damage of a dirty bomb, steps should be taken to prepare for an attack.  Third, decontamination plans should be developed now.

Securing:

The Departments of Homeland Security and Energy have been working toward this goal. However, stricter regulations for using radioactive sources must be enacted to support this effort.

Preparing/responding:

An educated and prepared public will be less likely to panic in the aftermath of a dirty bomb attack, and this will be reinforced by a well-managed reaction by first responders and elected officials.

Cleaning up:

Weeks and months after an attack, the long-term effects of radiation will need to be addressed.  Advanced decontamination techniques and technologies that can reduce the radiation levels in city neighborhoods must be developed.

It’s a strategy of deterrence where if terrorists do not achieve the desired effects by using a dirty bomb, why bother?

Taken together, these steps will prevent widespread panic and significant economic damage.  After the first dirty bomb attack fails, terrorists are unlikely to try again.

You can read the whole thing here: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/power/2011/03/04/a-better-way-to-deal-with-dirty-bomb-threats/

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA officer and Chief of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Department following 9/11, as well as former Director of Intelligence and Counterintelligence at the Department of Energy, has published a new report on “Islam and the Bomb.”  This is not a philosophical or religious tract on the underlying beliefs of Muslims concerning violence, but instead an analysis of the arguments made for and against acquisition and use of nuclear weapons. From his preface:

When I began this project, my goal was to develop insight into the deeper thought process behind al-Qaeda’s nuclear intent. I expected to find evidence that their interest is strong, perhaps unshakable, but hinges on capability, i.e., they will use weapons of mass destruction if they are able to acquire them. Specifically, I set out to examine the impact al-Qaeda’s apparent frustration in acquiring WMD has had on the group’s intent; perhaps their interest has waned in recent years, or has been overtaken by global events.

I was surprised to discover that al-Qaeda’s WMD ambitions are stronger than ever. This intent no longer feels theoretical, but operational. I believe al-Qaeda is laying the groundwork for a large scale attack on the United States, possibly in the next year or two. The attack may or may not involve the use of WMD, but there are signs that al-Qaeda is working on an event on a larger scale than the 9/11 attack.

Mowatt-Larssen is concerned that Al Qaeda has gone out of its way to not simply justify violence against its enemies but a very particular and vast scale of destruction.

For years, I chased leads to al-Qaeda’s efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD), without finding the answers to fundamental questions. Yes, it is clear that al-Qaeda is seeking high-end WMD, specifically nuclear and biological weapons capable of causing mass casualties. But why has al-Qaeda set their sights so high? Isn’t a “dirty bomb” or a chemical device a more probable threat, since such weapons are much easier to obtain? What is al-Qaeda’s justification for using WMD — how much of a factor is religion in their thinking? What can terrorists hope to achieve by indiscriminately killing people on a mass scale?

Due to Al Qaeda’s use and seeming requirement of religious justification for such acts, Mowatt-Larssen contends that those justifications require analysis.

Considering the daunting challenge of divining what lies in someone’s mind, my modest objective is to present a framework for analyzing key factors that impact on the religious justification under Islam for and against nuclear weapons. Al-Qaeda (Sunni extremism) and Iran (Shia theocracy) are offered as two case studies in this regard, because their potential acquisition of nuclear weapons is of greatest contemporary concern. Presenting them side by side will invite a comparison of the respective arguments of a state and sub-state actor, in both houses of Islam. However, their inclusion together in this project should not be construed as an effort to compare or equate al-Qaeda and Iran with one another, either their motivations, or in moral terms.

The sections of this report represent a compilation of the various arguments that are being made in the Islamic community today. I have endeavored to faithfully represent the views of key voices in the Muslim world, scholars, and extremists, whether they are for or against nuclear weapons — and to put their testimony on the record. For this reason, the paper contains a large number of quotes and excerpts of key lines of reasoning for and against the bomb.

During a time when the majority of pundits and terrorism experts express the opinion that Al Qaeda represents an ideology that perhaps motivates action or inspires franchises and not a direct operational threat, Mowatt-Larssen’s ideas and conclusions will be controversial (never mind for those who discount the threat of nuclear terrorism entirely).

The entire report can be downloaded here: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/uploads/Islam_and_the_Bomb-Final.pdf

Also challenging the conventional wisdom regarding Al Qaeda’s strength is Leah Farrall, an Australian counter terrorism analyst with an article in the latest edition of  Foreign Affairs. “How al qaeda works” argues that:

Despite nearly a decade of war, al Qaeda is stronger today than when it carried out the 9/11 attacks. Before 2001, its history was checkered with mostly failed attempts to fulfill its most enduring goal: the unification of other militant Islamist groups under its strategic leadership. However, since fleeing Afghanistan to Pakistan’s tribal areas in late 2001, al Qaeda has founded a regional branch in the Arabian Peninsula and acquired franchises in Iraq and the Maghreb. Today, it has more members, greater geographic reach, and a level of ideological sophistication and influence it lacked ten years ago.

For a limited time you can read the entire article for free on her blog, “All Things Counter Terrorism:” http://allthingscounterterrorism.com/foreign-affairs-article-how-al-qaeda-works/

I don’t mean to conjure the macabre with that headline, just to simply point out that there was a time in this nation’s history that preparing for the worst meant “nuclear combat toe-to-toe with the Ruskies” that would result in millions of deaths. I think it is absolutely a good thing that a few hundred is now considered a tragedy and a few thousand actually hard to fathom for some authorities. Unfortunately I also think that those same officials have been so focused on the everyday risks that planning for the worst days, and the associated benefits of such efforts, is a lost art.

What inspired me to such dark thoughts is the recent revelation of an official U.S. Air Force movie, “The Power of Decision,” that seems to have been filmed as a training exercise to show how to calmly react to the potential end of civilization as we know it. So calmly in fact, as a colleague pointed out, smoking a cigarette while ordering a retaliatory nuclear strike on the Soviet Union is just natural.

The National Security Archive at George Washington University guesses at its purpose:

It was probably used for internal training purposes so that officers and airmen could prepare for the worst active-duty situation that they could encounter.  Perhaps the relatively unruffled style of the film’s performers was to help serve as a model for SAC officers if they ever had to follow orders that could produce a nuclear holocaust.

While hard for those of us who were born well into the nuclear age to grasp, a concept of impending nuclear destruction was not hard to grok for earlier generations:

“The Power of Decision” may be the first (and perhaps the only) U.S. government film depicting the Cold War nightmare of a U.S.-Soviet nuclear conflict.  The U.S. Air Force produced it during 1956-1957 at the request of the Strategic Air Command.  Unseen for years and made public for the first time by the National Security Archive, the film depicts the U.S. Air Force’s implementation of war plan “Quick Strike” in response to a Soviet surprise attack against the United States and European and East Asian allies.  By the end of the film, after the Air Force launches a massive bomber-missile “double-punch,” millions of Americans, Russians, Europeans, and Japanese are dead.

Even though the U.S. “wins,” it does not seem to be much of a victory:

The United States suffered terrible losses: 60 million casualties including 20 million wounded. The industrial areas of several cities were destroyed, including New York, Detroit and Chicago. Other cities such as St. Louis, Denver and Seattle suffered severe damage and high casualties.

Both the trailer and full (one hour) movie can be watched on the website of the National Security Archive.  For both, go to: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb336/index.htm

A mixed bag of relatively recent homeland security items that may have escaped attention.

Dirty Bombs

The Newshour on PBS recently aired a short segment on “How Tough is it to Build a Dirty Bomb.”  If you are interested in a dirty bomb primer, you could do a whole lot worse.  The video and transcript can be found here:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/jan-june11/dirtybombs_02-08.html

The piece is a good, basic bit of reporting with an interesting interview with the man once referred to as the “Radioactive Boyscout.”  However, it would have been helpful if the reporter had pushed NYPD representatives to justify continued spending on the Securing the Cities effort instead of considering alternative means of dealing with the threat of dirty bombs.

Al Jazeera

During this tumultuous period in the Middle East, U.S. print and cable news services have scrambled to provide coverage in countries where they previously had little infrastructure.  In stark contrast, Al-Jazeera focuses its reporting on events in the region and was well positioned to respond to the string of fast breaking events.  However, very few U.S. cable companies carry the station and this led to a huge spike in traffic to Al Jazeera’s English website.

Some argue that the station is simply a platform for anti-U.S. and anti-Semitic views while others insist it is a serious news organization that allows distasteful commentators air time.  In a recent Boston Globe op-ed, former DHS Assistant Secretary Juliette Kayyem argues that the public should be allowed access to the vital reporting from that region Al Jazeera provides.  She acknowledges the less savory aspects of the station, but feels it should be left to the public to decide what and when to tune into any particular media.

While US news corporations scrambled to get people and equipment to the region, AJE was already there, at the forefront of documenting the Egyptian government’s atrocities and demise, so much so that AJE’s offices in Egypt were raided and its journalists detained.

The latest Wikileaks-related news concerns Al Qaeda’s pursuit of radioactive material for use in a dirty bomb. Despite the sometimes alarmist headlines, the cables made available to the newspaper The Telegraph do not point to an imminent dirty bomb attack.  Instead they underline existing risks, not just dirty bombs but also nuclear and biological terrorism.

The focus on dirty bombs is understandable, as the majority of the reporting focuses on smuggled radioactive material.

Alerts about the smuggling of nuclear material, sent to Washington from foreign US embassies, document how criminal and terrorist gangs were trafficking large amounts of highly radioactive material across Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

At a Nato meeting in January 2009 , security chiefs briefed member states that al-Qaeda was plotting a programme of “dirty radioactive IEDs”, makeshift nuclear roadside bombs that could be used against British troops in Afghanistan.

More troublesome, and not stressed in any of the headlines, are the nuclear terrorism-related nuggets:

An Indian national security adviser told American security personnel in June 2008 that terrorists had made a “manifest attempt to get fissile material” and “have the technical competence to manufacture an explosive device beyond a mere dirty bomb”.

Freight trains were found to be carrying weapons-grade nuclear material across the Kazakhstan-Russia border, highly enriched uranium was transported across Uganda by bus

Tomihiro Taniguchi, the deputy director-general of the IAEA, has privately warned America that the world faces the threat of a “nuclear 9/11″ if stores of uranium and plutonium were not secured against terrorists.

Senior British defence officials have raised “deep concerns” that a rogue scientist in the Pakistani nuclear programme “could gradually smuggle enough material out to make a weapon,” according to a document detailing official talks in London in February 2009.

If that is not enough bad news for you, biological weapons are also mentioned in the leaked diplomatic cables:

The briefings also state that al-Qaida documents found in Afghanistan in 2007 revealed that “greater advances” had been made in bioterrorism than was previously realized.

A lot of bad news.  But not new news.  The alarm about these threats has been raised repeatedly over the years.  Just a few thoughts:

Dirty Bombs

If a dirty bomb is detonated inside the U.S., the radioactive material will most likely have originated within the U.S. and not have been smuggled from Eastern Europe or Central Asia.  There should be a greater focus on improving the security of the potentially most dangerous dirty bomb materials used within our borders and on developing technologies and techniques for cleaning up after an attack.

Nuclear terrorism

It is heartening to see foreign officials raising the alarm about nuclear terrorism.  There exists a perception that it is a particular “American” neurosis instead of a shared risk. Expanding understanding of the risks should hopefully make it easier to take the (relatively) simple steps towards securing weapons-usable fissile material (which exists in much smaller amounts compared to radioactive sources that could be utilized in a dirty bomb).

Bioterrorism

Recent focus as been on efforts to produce anti-virals and vaccines quickly to emerging natural pathogens or even engineered bioterrorist weapons.  While important, I fear that there is not enough focus on the ability to distribute these drugs or the eroding ability of public health services around the nation to detect a natural or man-made outbreak.  The Trust for Americ’a Health most recent “Ready or Not” report points out that the “economic recession has led to cuts in public health staffing and eroded the basic capabilities of state and local health departments, which are needed to successfully respond to crises.”

So even if we wake up tomorrow to discover that the biomedical fairy has gifted us the ability to quickly produce the needed drugs, how sure are we that authorities could get them to the people in need in a timely manner?  Or even realize that they are needed in the first place?

The Good

Potential ingredients for a terrorist nuclear bomb have been secured:

“Under extremely tight security, Ukraine has sent 110 pounds of highly enriched uranium, a significant portion of its Soviet-era stock, to Russia for disposal or storage, officials announced Friday.

The material, taken from research reactors, was moved by plane in December in specially designed casks as part of President Obama’s effort to reduce the chances that nuclear material might be diverted or stolen.

Ukraine’s president, Viktor F. Yanukovich, agreed at a meeting convened by Mr. Obama in April to give up his country’s highly enriched uranium, which can be used to build nuclear weapons. In May, Ukraine shipped 123 pounds of highly enriched uranium by train to Russia, and officials said they hoped that the rest of the country’s stock would be exported by the end of 2012.”

This is yet another example of success for a low cost-high reward program.  Securing potentially vulnerable stocks of fissile material, particularly HEU, is the most effective way to prevent nuclear terrorism.  While a low probability event, the danger of such an attack will continue to exist as long as vulnerable caches of fissile material remain.

In other good news, a new repository for low-level radioactive waste may open:

“A Texas commission Tuesday set in motion the importation of low-level radioactive-waste from 36 other states, a move long sought by the nuclear-energy industry and long opposed by environmentalists.

The Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission, which manages the state’s radioactive-waste dump, voted 5-2 to approve rules governing the process for accepting the out-of-state material.”

“The site will permanently store low-level radioactive waste—contaminated materials and equipment from nuclear plants, research laboratories and hospitals. The material includes everything from parts from dismantled nuclear-energy plants to booties worn by scientists working in labs where radioactive materials are present. More highly contaminated waste, such as spent fuel from power plants, wouldn’t be stored at the site.

The waste will be stored at the 1,338-acre site in concrete-reinforced underground units.

States are responsible for handling low-level radioactive waste produced within their own borders, but space for it is limited. And the three disposal sites for it in the U.S. don’t take all kinds of materials within the low-level category or can only take waste from certain states. That leaves 36 states without a permanent storage place.”

Obviously there are always legitimate environmental concerns when it comes to the location of radioactive waste repositories.  Due to a lack of specific information regarding this particular site, I am not considering that in regards to my “good” value judgment about this development.  Instead, I am concentrating on the fact that there is a dire need for such a depository.  While not solving the problem of nuclear power plant spent fuel storage that was intended for the Yucca Mountain site, it does help address the need to centralize and secure lower-level radioactive material most likely to be used in a dirty bomb.

The Bad

The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) within DHS has finally completed their “nuclear detection architecture” assignment:

“The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office delivered its long-awaited “strategic plan” for the global nuclear detection architecture to Capitol Hill on Dec. 20, according to DNDO chief Warren Stern. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano signed off on the plan that same day.”

“The 31-page document defines the goals of the architecture, including detecting nuclear and radioactive materials; communicating information to relevant agencies and officials; and coordinating with those partners to “minimize gaps and also remove overlaps,” according to Stern, who was appointed to his post by President Obama last August.”

This is not bad as much as perhaps a continuing tragedy of misplaced priorities.  Nuclear detection capability can be useful, but to date the return on investment is small.  Despite the best of intentions, DNDO has yet to demonstrate an ability to exert much influence over any pieces of the “architecture” that it does not directly own.

“In addition, the interdepartmental road map outlines the roles of a number of federal branches in preventing terrorists from detonating a nuclear or radiological device inside the United States, he said. Participating entities include the Defense, Energy, Justice and State departments, the U.S. national intelligence director and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.”

“He added that while the detection office intends to have its implementation plan developed by the third quarter of this calendar year, there is no deadline for the other departments to complete their documents, nor are officials required to submit those plans to Congress.”

DNDO/DHS has control over detection activities at the border.  The Department of Energy, through programs like the Second Line of Defense, holds sway overseas.  Domestically, while DNDO provides a wide range of assistance, it is still up to local and state authorities to decide their level of participation in radiation detection programs.

There is also the matter of resources.

“The office has received roughly $4 billion in funding since its inception, according to a Government Accountability Office statement released last year. Some of that money went toward expanding existing programs at other DHS components, including deploying radiation portal monitors at U.S. points of entry.”

Current technology is unlikely to detect HEU and only has a slightly better chance of finding plutonium, so for the most part the system is useful for finding potential dirty bomb ingredients.  What if some of the money directed towards detection was instead focused on decontamination/recovery?  What would be the point of terrorists attempting to use a dirty bomb if the technology existed to clean up afterward?

Perhaps nuclear/radiological detection is the missile defense of homeland security.  By that I mean it is a very useful capability to develop, one that in limited circumstances currently adds value, but also is seen as something of a technological panacea to problems that can be addressed through other means.

The Ugly

The recent assassination of Pakistani governor Salman Taseer has implications beyond the political.  Steve Coll, blogging at the New Yorker, explains the nuclear connection:

“Pakistan’s Personnel Reliability Programs, as they are known in the nuclear security trade, involve not only evaluating the suitability of bodyguards for governors but also the management of the country’s swelling stockpile of fissile materials and nuclear bombs. Taseer’s betrayal should give pause to those officials in Washington who seem regularly to express complacency, or at least satisfaction, about the security of Pakistan’s arsenal.”

If true, this might be representative of  serious cracks in Pakistan’s nuclear security.  It is not only the risk of their nuclear weapons falling into terrorist hands that we have to worry about.  Pakistan is currently working to expand their arsenal, exposing increasing amounts of fissile material to insider threats.

Reporter William Broad of the New York Times has an interesting article in today’s paper on the difficulties with preparing the public for a nuclear terrorist attack.  The piece, “U.S. Rethinks Strategy for the Unthinkable,” answers one important question while raising several others.

The question answered, or at least the one for which an answer is offered: “Immediately following a nuclear detonation, do you tell people to shelter-in-place, evacuate, or a mixture of both depending on their location?”  The answer: everyone should shelter-in-place.

Suppose the unthinkable happened, and terrorists struck New York or another big city with an atom bomb. What should people there do? The government has a surprising new message: Do not flee. Get inside any stable building and don’t come out till officials say it’s safe.

The advice is based on recent scientific analyses showing that a nuclear attack is much more survivable if you immediately shield yourself from the lethal radiation that follows a blast, a simple tactic seen as saving hundreds of thousands of lives. Even staying in a car, the studies show, would reduce casualties by more than 50 percent; hunkering down in a basement would be better by far.

The Department of Homeland Security financed a multiagency modeling effort led by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The scientists looked at Washington, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other big cities, using computers to simulate details of the urban landscape and terrorist bombs.

The results were revealing. For instance, the scientists found that a bomb’s flash would blind many drivers, causing accidents and complicating evacuation.

The big surprise was how taking shelter for as little as several hours made a huge difference in survival rates.

Health physicist Brooke Buddemeier of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory explains the results of this modeling that point to potentially huge numbers of lives saved:

If people in Los Angeles a mile or more from ground zero of an attack took no shelter, Mr. Buddemeier said, there would be 285,000 casualties from fallout in that region.

Taking shelter in a place with minimal protection, like a car, would cut that figure to 125,000 deaths or injuries, he said. A shallow basement would further reduce it to 45,000 casualties. And the core of a big office building or an underground garage would provide the best shelter of all.

Fantastic news!  Right?  One small problem: shouldn’t the public know what they should do?

On Jan. 16, 2009 — four days before Mr. Bush left office — the White House issued a 92-page handbook lauding “pre-event preparedness.” But it was silent on the delicate issue of how to inform the public.

Soon after Mr. Obama arrived at the White House, he embarked a global campaign to fight atomic terrorism and sped up domestic planning for disaster response. A senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the new administration began a revision of the Bush administration’s handbook to address the issue of public communication.

Problem solved! Or is it?

The agenda hit a speed bump. Las Vegas was to star in the nation’s first live exercise meant to simulate a terrorist attack with an atom bomb, the test involving about 10,000 emergency responders. But casinos and businesses protested, as did Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. He told the federal authorities that it would scare away tourists.

Late last year, the administration backed down.

Apparently what happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas.  At least if it is a nuclear explosion anyway.

This article highlights a lot of good ideas, but exposes the biggest underlying obstacle to implementation.  We have seen the obstacle, and it is us.

Administration officials argue that the cold war created an unrealistic sense of fatalism about a terrorist nuclear attack. “It’s more survivable than most people think,” said an official deeply involved in the planning, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The key is avoiding nuclear fallout.”

The administration is making that argument with state and local authorities and has started to do so with the general public as well. Its Citizen Corps Web site says a nuclear detonation is “potentially survivable for thousands, especially with adequate shelter and education.” A color illustration shows which kinds of buildings and rooms offer the best protection from radiation.

In June, the administration released to emergency officials around the nation an unclassified planning guide 130 pages long on how to respond to a nuclear attack. It stressed citizen education, before any attack.

Involving the public more deeply in all facets of homeland security is a brilliant idea, and not a particularly new one.  Yet the concept always seem to flounder on what form that involvement should take and how to reach the desired audience with the desired message.

“Get a kit, make a plan, be informed” or it’s variants have been pushed by FEMA and partners for several years, yet public preparedness levels change little.  “See something, say something” offers the notion of a dialog with the public, yet the public is not informed what it should consider suspicious.

Now imagine adding nuclear-specific knowledge to the mix.  What percentage of the public will remember this advice if they find themselves the victims of a nuclear terrorist attack?  Don’t get me wrong, I would be a supporter of any such education campaign that got traction with the public.  I am pessimistic because after seeing the difficulties encountered by Ready.gov and other related preparedness programs to have an impact, these methods don’t seem to offer much hope of success:

The document said that planners had an obligation to help the public “make effective decisions” and that messages for predisaster campaigns might be tailored for schools, businesses and even water bills.

Messages from the federal government tailored for specific audiences are unlikely to stick.  Engaging those schools, businesses, churches, and other organizations to share those messages with their employees, students, members, etc. is a more difficult route, yet one offering a greater chance of success.

To prepare this nation for something as cataclysmic as nuclear terrorism, we must think bottom up, not top down.

Further reading:

• The entire New York Times article, “U.S. Rethinks Strategy for the Unthinkable:” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/science/16terror.html
• National Security Council, “Planning Guidance for Response to a Nuclear Detonation, 2nd edition:” http://hps.org/hsc/documents/Planning_Guidance_for_Response_to_a_Nuclear_Detonation-2nd_Edition_FINAL.pdf
• Institute of Medicine, “Assessing Medical Preparedness to Respond to a Terrorist Nuclear Event. Workshop Report:” http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2009/NucEventPrepWS.aspx
• Center for Biosecurity of UPMC, “Preparing to Save Lives and Recover After a Nuclear Detonation:” http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/website/events/2010_nuke/index.html
• (Warning: a little self promotion ahead) Emergency Management, “White House Homeland Security Council Urges Nuclear Attack Response Planning:” http://www.emergencymgmt.com/disaster/White-House-Homeland-Security.html
• If you are wondering about the title of this post: Blind Boys of Alabama – Atom Bomb

Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.”
-John F. Kennedy (JFK)
In an address before the General Assembly of the United Nations on September 25, 1961

I just wanted to bring to readers’ attention a recent “Forum” held at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government concerning the documentary “Countdown to Zero.”  A video of the entire event can be found here: http://www.iop.harvard.edu/Multimedia-Center/All-Videos/Future-of-Nuclear-Weapons-Countdown-to-Zero

“Countdown to Zero” is a movie that supports the efforts to eventually eliminate all nuclear weapons.  It categorizes nuclear threats into three categories: terrorism, accidents, and miscalculation.  I personally found it engaging and interesting, but would certainly recommend that you come to you own conclusions.

This event in particular is interesting because they do not merely recap what is mentioned in the film.  Instead the participants (moderated by Belfer Center Director Graham Allison and including Matthew Bunn, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, and Valerie Plame), all of whom have some screen time in the documentary, provide their personal opinions about not only the topics raised in the movie but those regarding current nuclear-related subjects such as New START, North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, etc.

If you follow nuclear terrorism and proliferation topics closely, you will recongize the instances where the panel members identify points of disagreement.  While it may be surprising to nuclear terrorism skeptics, even “true believers” disagree in their personal analysis about specific topics under the larger rubric of nuclear issues.

Also, and this might be just personal opinion, but my favorite part of these Forums (which are held regularly at the Kennedy School) is that no matter the topic or speaker, the invited guest must take questions from the audience.  And these are never staged–you reach the microphones first, you get to ask whatever question you wish.

So for nuclear terrorism skeptics in the audience, get ye self to a related Harvard Kennedy School Forum and get to a microphone early.  You will have your concerns addressed, even if you do not like the answer.

For those interested in learning more about the Zero effort, obtaining a copy of the movie, or contributing to the cause can visit: http://www.takepart.com/countdowntozero

While the nature of the nuclear threat has drastically changed since the end of the Cold War, that bumper sticker message still rings true.

In contrast to President Obama’s stated belief in nuclear terrorism’s “game changing” nature (made clear in his remarks to Bob Woodward), there have been a number of recent analyses that pushback on the existence of a nuclear terrorist threat.  These include the previously blogged about Bruce Hoffman and Peter Bergen report, Bergen by himself in the CTC Sentinel, former CIA and FBI agent Philip Mudd in that same publication, and Al Mauroni on this website (via Homeland Security Affairs).  Even Noble Prize winning economist Thomas Schelling appears to have reconsidered his earlier prescient warnings about nuclear terrorism during a recent conference.

I do not suggest that all the authors I mentioned make the same arguments or that what follows is an exhaustive analysis.  However, I did want to highlight some of the reoccurring points levied against the risk of nuclear terrorism and provide some small measure of rebuttal (this is a blog posting—not a journal article…).

To be clear, I am not suggesting that a nuclear bomb is more likely to be used by terrorists than conventional bombs (insert target/delivery vehicle here—planes, trains, or automobiles), small arms, or other conventional weapons. However, it seems that the discourse (if not all the official attention) concerning terrorism focuses on certain prevailing memes.  Following 9/11, the conventional wisdom held that the next Al Qaeda attack on the homeland had to trump 9/11.  Combined with the anthrax mailings, this led to a sense of urgency regarding CBRN. This reasoning was often used to explain the absence of a wave of attacks involving shopping malls and other soft targets.  The conventional wisdom began to shift over the years with the lack of subsequent large-scale attacks.  Now it seems overwhelming opinion points toward a wave of smaller attacks, likely homegrown, exemplified by the attempted Times Square and cargo plane bombings.

What I wonder is why shouldn’t we consider a range of possible attacks and orient ourselves appropriately to the chaotic nature of terrorism? An innovative bomb maker in Yemen may not pose a nuclear terrorism risk, but it is possible that a compartmentalized nuclear plot is underway far from circling drone aircraft in Pakistan.  And what about the threat from terrorists not directed, aligned, or even inspired by Al Qaeda?

To the arguments:

Al Qaeda is under too much pressure or lacks a secure base from which to carry out such a complicated plot.

Or put another way, how can Al Qaeda plan and carry out a nuclear attack when they are too busy avoiding drone attacks?

At first blush, this seems like the proverbial candle stick holder in the library next to the dead body of nuclear terrorism (if you don’t get the Clue reference, please just understand that it is a strong argument).

However, then one remembers 9/11.  Did the terrorist pilots learn to fly aircraft in Afghanistan?  No, they went to flight school in the U.S.    The entire operation was planned in those terror training camps, right?  Well….not exactly.  It seems Hamburg (why aren’t we engaged in a COIN vs. CT argument about Germany?) and Kuala Lumpur might also have played a role.

My general point is that even the largest of terrorist plots do not require a safe haven in Afghanistan or even Pakistan to be successful.

Too many complicated steps involved—from obtaining the material through delivery to target—making success unlikely.

This is a particularly popular line of reasoning among skeptics who reference Council on Foreign Relation Senior Fellow Michael Levi’s book “On Nuclear Terrorism.”  Levi examines each step terrorists might need to successfully take to carry out a nuclear attack.  Adding up the probabilities for failure along the way, he concludes a nuclear terrorist attack is possible but not likely.

Yet skeptics should take note before citing him again—he still recommends a range of actions that conform exactly to the steps so-called nuclear terrorism “alarmists” suggest.  These include securing weapons-useable material, the deployment of radiation detectors at well-chosen sites, intelligence and law enforcement work, and even public preparedness.

If one takes all the steps required to successfully pull off the 9/11 attacks and considers the probability of failure at each juncture, and then adds them up, it is unlikely such an attack would have been successful.

Yet it was.

Unobtainable technical expertise.

Or, as former Pakistani President Musharraf is alleged to state, “men in caves can’t do that.”

Yet unfortunately they can.  If they posses the required fissile material.  A simple HEU-fueled bomb was never tested before it was dropped on Hiroshima.  It does not take a Manhattan Project to come up with a workable design—while complete plans cannot be found on the Internet, the physics behind the bomb is well known.  An exercise, referred to as the Nth Country Experiment, took typical physics graduate students and had them design a working nuclear weapon.  And they succeeded (as have a few other publicly known cases). This, supported by technical analysis pointing out the need for a skilled, yet small, team supports the notion that such an attack is possible.

The material required for a nuclear weapon is unobtainable.

In a recent conference, Peter Bergen is reported to have stated, “all of the reported thefts of highly enriched uranium since World War II would add up to only about eight pounds, or roughly a third of the amount needed to construct even the simplest nuclear device, he said, adding that none of the thefts were related to Islamist militants.

So there really isn’t the material let alone the expertise for terrorist groups to create a nuclear weapon.”

Okay.  I accept those figures.  But all, or at least the vast majority, of that intercepted fissile material was never reported missing in the first place.  So either we can rest our hopes on the fact that all the material found in busts does not add up to the amounts required in a nuclear weapon, or we can worry about the potential missing material not reported and not intercepted.

In addition, this is where some point out the lengths that Iran or other countries have gone to in their nuclear ambitions without success.  This simply confuses the issue.  Nation states seeking nuclear weapons have to master the hardest part—producing the highly enriched uranium or plutonium needed for the bomb. States then would want to build a weapon small enough to be delivered by missile or small aircraft.  Terrorists would never be able to produce this material, so they need to acquire it through theft or purchase.  Their weapon could be a crude device requiring a small truck to deliver it to target.

No indication of any nuclear aspirations in previous plots.

This is an argument that is difficult to understand. Again, Mr. Bergen: “In a study of all the jihadist terrorist attacks since Sept. 11, about 172 incidents in all, Bergen said, the think tank found that none involved weapons of mass destruction.”

How many terrorist plots in the 1990s involved crashing airplanes into buildings? Or even attacking U.S. warships? So why should we only consider the type of attacks that have already occurred as the only potential threats?  Terrorists have expressed interest in nuclear weapons.  It is possible, though difficult, for them to acquire nuclear weapons.  And the consequences would be almost unimaginable.  Simply because they have yet to carry out an attack using a nuclear bomb is not a logical argument that they can’t or won’t.

We should focus on the terrorists instead of the potential weapons.

This is a seemingly sound idea popularized by Bruce Schneier.  Except that it is most often used to either argue against security screening measures at airports or any focus on CBRN (strangely, no one uses this reasoning to argue that we should ignore someone with no known terrorist connection living in a large urban area buying hundreds of pounds of fertilizer that could be used in a bomb).  In terms of the nuclear terrorism threat, while a focus on the potential actors is vital, what is the guarantee that we will be 100% successful?  Without such a success rate, it seems the argument against securing potential bomb making material is rather weak.  For example, David Headley was not only involved in scouting out sites for the Mumbai attacks, his activity was brought to the attention of authorities by his wives (yes, plural).  This did not lead to the disruption of the operation and the pieces were only put together afterwards. How confident can we be in our ability to disrupt all potential future terrorist plots?

Again, I am not arguing that nuclear terrorism is likely to occur tomorrow.  Or that it is more likely than any number of conventional attacks.

I am suggesting that it is a threat worthy of serious policy consideration, especially given the potential consequences.  And I welcome comments trying to convince me otherwise.

Further reading:

Rolf-Mowatt Larssen, “Preventing Nuclear Terrorism: Evolving Forms of the Nuclear Genie.” http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/Evolving%20Forms%20of%20Nuclear%20Genie.pdf

Graham Allison, “Nuclear Terrorism Fact Sheet.”

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/20057/nuclear_terrorism_fact_sheet.html

USA Today published a story this week regarding the threat of solar storms and Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) that highlighted an issue inherent in homeland security more broadly—how to walk the line between resilience and overreaction.

The piece summarizes the threat posed by both natural solar storms and EMP caused by high-altitude explosion of nuclear weapons.  If you are unfamiliar with either or both, the USA Today article provides accessible descriptions of both phenomena.

In the overreaction column:

Gingrich last year cited the EMP Commission report in warning, “One weapon of this kind that went off over Omaha would eliminate most of the electrical production in the United States.”

There are others with more measured analysis:

There are “some important reasons for concern,” says physicist Yousaf Butt of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. “But there is also a lot of fluff.”

You would really need something the size of a Soviet H-bomb to have effects that cross many states,” Butt says.

The solar storm story is less political:

On March 9, 1989, the sun spat a million-mile-wide blast of high-temperature charged solar gas straight at the Earth. The “coronal mass ejection” struck the planet three days later, triggering a geomagnetic storm that made the northern lights visible in Texas. The storm also induced currents in Quebec’s power grid that knocked out power for 6 million people in Canada and the USA for at least nine hours.

The sensible mitigation effort in the face of EMPs, solar storms, or even cyber threats would be simple (if not cheap) steps to stockpile extra transformers and other hard-to-replace electrical grid-related equipment.

Unfortunately, the threat of an EMP attack often is used to further an agenda based on a radical expansion of missile defenses that would include the ability to intercept missiles fired from freighters off the U.S. coast.  In a Heritage Foundation Foundry blog posting regarding the same USA Today article, the author stretches credibility to make this case:

“For countries less dependent on modern technologies and electronics, including both rogue states like Iran and North Korea as well as stateless terrorist groups, EMP provides a potential way to attack the United States through asymmetric means. EMPs could be used to circumvent America’s superior conventional military power while reducing vulnerability to retaliation in kind.”

The author of this particular quotation, Heritage analyst Jena Baker McNeil, seems to misunderstand the basics of deterrence.  It is certain that the U.S. would not retaliate to an EMP attack with only an EMP attack.  So regardless of the level of dependence of the attacker on modern technologies, the nuclear retaliatory strike would be directed at destroying what the enemy regime holds most dear—the regime itself.  In other words, any nuclear strike on the United States (even a single EMP strike) by an identified state (and even an attempt at a somewhat covert EMP attack by a state would certainly be identified through a combination of nuclear forensics and intelligence) would result in an overwhelming nuclear response.

A discussion of the nuclear terrorist threat requires a separate post.  I would just like to suggest that while I worry about nuclear terrorism, and believe it is a threat requiring urgent action, the threat of terrorists obtaining not only a nuclear weapon but one capable of being combined with a SCUD (and of course obtaining the SCUD itself) is not something I believe should be keeping anyone up at night.

(H/t to Armchair Generalist for an earlier post regarding the USA Today piece.)

Further Reading:

Yousaf M. Butt, “The EMP threat: fact, fiction, and response (Part I),” The Space Review: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1549/1

Yousaf M. Butt, “The EMP threat: fact, fiction, and response (Part II),” The Space Review: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1553/1

Albert J. Mauroni is an analyst with twenty five years experience in chemical, biological, nuclear, and radiological (CBRN) defense policy and program development.  He has written six books about chemical and biological warfare.

Mauroni recently wrote an article about how the US homeland security enterprise addresses the threat of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear terrorism.  He argues that our policy is flawed fundamentally.

Here are selected excerpts from his contrarian –  very readable and compelling — article (the full document is available here ).

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Some History

Our current homeland security approach to CBRN terrorism seems to have its basis in the incidents of 9/11 and the U.S. anthrax attacks in October-November 2001. However, our history of homeland defense goes back to 1941 (at least); to understand from a policy perspective how the government ought to address domestic CBRN terrorism, we need to put it all in context.

… Initially, the federal government saw its role strictly as providing a response to the intentional use of military weapons against U.S. cities and noncombatants. First it was the fear of German and Japanese bombers and missiles hitting U.S. cities on the coast. Then it was the threat of Soviet bombers and missiles. But the congressional response was not to spend great deals of money on this threat. Over time, the state and local officials were not as concerned about the possibility of external attack as they were the power of Mother Nature. Congress, influenced by those state and local officials, decided it was more important for the federal government to respond to states and locals affected by natural disasters and accidents rather than external threats. That balance was rudely jarred after 9/11, and we have yet to re-establish a more balanced view.

What does “WMD” mean?

The term “WMD” was the word of the year in 2002, but quickly fell into abuse as a term of political rhetoric and comedic punch lines. It was originally developed in 1948 by the United Nations as an accepted arms control term to describe the nation-state use of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.…

The military defines WMD as nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons that can cause a “high order of destruction.” I would add to this definition that the intentional use of these weapons needs to cause mass casualties….

The presence of mass casualties is a key aspect of the WMD incident, but “mass casualties” is an undefined and nebulous phrase. In general, people use the term to describe a situation in which there is one more casualty than the number of available hospital beds in the local area…. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) chose the number of 1,000 injured or dead people for the trigger for its Metropolitan Medical Response Forces.

I disagree with the FBI’s use of the Title 18 U.S. Code definition of WMD because of its deliberate lack of reference to the scale of the incident. To the Department of Justice (DoJ) lawyers, any amount of CBRN or explosives, no matter how small, constitutes a WMD. Even [inert] devices or hoaxes can have WMD aspects.

In my mind, the term “WMD” is only useful as an arms control term…..

…I’m not against consideration of high-yield explosives, directed energy lasers, or other weapons that could realistically cause mass casualties. Ricin and botolinum toxin, often used in small amounts for assassinations, are not WMD. Airplanes used to cause mass casualty events are not WMD. Pipebombs and grenades are not WMD.

What do you think about CBRNE?

I don’t like the term “CBRNE” because that’s an antiterrorism term, not a WMD term. The military police and emergency responders within the DOD antiterrorism community started using “CBRNE” in the late 1990s because of numerous terrorist incidents such as the bombing at Khobar Towers, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the Aum Shinrikyo’s Tokyo subway incident. But the antiterrorism community really doesn’t worry about the “CBRN” as much as they do the “E.” When it comes to assigning resources and time to the most credible threats, the more probable threat of explosives wins over CBRN hazards every time.

Terrorists get their material and technology where they can, from the local economy. They don’t have the time, funds, or interests to get exotic. That’s what we see, over and over again. The [National Counter Terrorism Center] noted that, in 2008, there were approximately 11,800 terrorist attacks resulting in more than 54,000 deaths, injuries, and kidnappings. Nearly all were caused by armed assaults, bombings, suicide attacks, kidnappings, and other conventional forms of assault.

DHS and CBRN

In 2003, DHS began developing its CBRN terrorism response efforts by basically copying the DOD’s CBRN defense concept. This included recommending the use of plastic sheets and duct tape for homes and businesses to provide “shelter in place” collective protection and the use of point detectors to identify lethal levels of chemical, biological, and radiological hazards.

There were two major problems with this approach. First, the threat of CBRN hazard exposure to people at home (or even businesses) was about near zero, and second, the low probability of a CBRN hazard being used on any one day during the year at any one particular site within the United States was practically zero.

It was not a sustainable strategy if one demanded eternal vigilance at all locations with the goal of eliminating all threats. And of course, the U.S. government wasn’t protecting all potential terrorist targets.

Homeland Security Planning Scenarios

The Homeland Security Planning Scenarios are ridiculously unrealistic in portraying the expected threats to the homeland. Of the fifteen scenarios, eleven are CBRN-focused, and not just typical CBRN hazards but significant quantities of military warfare agents such as anthrax, smallpox, sarin nerve agent, and mustard agent.

They are “worst-case” scenarios, which are good for leadership exercises where you want to encourage interagency communications or to identify whether policies or resources are a limiting factor, but they are lousy for making resourcing decisions.

Worst-case scenarios rely on movie-theater plots that maximize the threat only because that’s the best way to get a maximum number of senior leaders within multiple agencies at the federal level involved to play in a short, annual national exercise. The 10-kiloton nuclear scenario is particularly ridiculous….

Terrorists and WMD

I don’t believe in the popular assumption that terrorists are actively working with “rogue nations” to exploit WMD materials and technology. The evidence isn’t there. Nation states invest heavy amounts of people and funds to develop specific unconventional weapons, and if they were to give or sell them to terrorists, one of two things could happen – either the weapons would be traced back to them, or the weapons might get used someplace where the nation state regrets.

The basic approach used by terrorists and insurgents is to seek out and use low-risk, easily-acquired weapon systems. Any weapon that can be improvised using available and accessible materials is good; any weapon that can be bought on the open market and easily used is good. CBRN materials don’t fit that niche.

The generic terrorist threat is often referenced without any specific understanding of specific group motivations or activities. Al Qaeda has stated intentions to use CBRN hazards, but this has not led to the actual development of any specific capabilities. …. We’re blindly attacking the tools instead of the terrorists.

The reason why terrorists are interested in CBRN hazards is because so many senior [US] leaders keep vocalizing how afraid they are of this particular threat. Before 9/11, the interest was not as strong (and the senior leader rhetoric about “WMD threats” wasn’t, either).

While terrorists are interested in CBRN hazards, they can’t get the dangerous precursor materials, they don’t have any training in handling or dispersing these hazards, and they don’t understand the particular effects on their targets. So we see some scattered use of industrial chemicals, some production of ricin toxin from castor beans, a few grams of radioactive material stolen from a facility – not exactly mass casualty threats.

As terrorists attempt to develop more sophisticated weapons in an effort to create mass casualties, their machinations become more public and it actually becomes easier to catch them.

Chemical Weapons

Chemical terrorism has been downplayed recently, ironically because it doesn’t cause enough casualties for high-consequence scenarios. Chemical terrorism remains the most likely form of CBRN terrorism, if one looks at the relative ease of obtaining industrial chemicals from the economy and low threshold of training and equipment required.

Still, people focus on the nerve agents as the “likely” threat, not because they’re available, but because they’re the most lethal.

Actual cases show terrorists seeking available industrial chemicals rather than making nerve agents, with one exception. Aum Shinrikyo had millions of dollars, facilities, trained chemists, and years of practice to make its sarin nerve agent. Most terrorist groups lack those resources.

DHS and Chemical Weapons

I’m not a proponent of the DHS Chemical Facility Antiterrorism Standards, where the department looks to identify all chemical storage facilities and to make their owners assess the security of their chemicals. All this does is cause incentives to industry to move the chemicals somewhere else. Instead of focusing on the major producers, DHS diminishes its efforts by trying to cover tens of thousands of small facilities and anyone using a chemistry kit. It becomes a paperwork drill where no one addresses the really tough problems.

The railcar discussions are particularly amusing, in that there is so much concern about a hazmat derailment within a major city. So the answer is to divert hazardous materials around a city, right? There are two things wrong with that – the secondary rails are less well maintained, and so represent a greater safety risk. And legal issues with regulation of interstate rail transport get in the way.

Bioterrorism

Bioterrorism is the flavor of the year, thanks to a recently-released government report titled “World At Risk” by former senators Bob Graham and Jim Talent.  Hollywood and fiction novels have done their best to ensure we all believe that a contagious virus without any cure is being secretly developed in a government lab and will wipe out civilization as we know it….

One requires a large amount of biological warfare (BW) agent to successfully cause mass casualties, and these agents can’t be made in a bathtub. You can’t go to Wal-Mart stores to obtain dangerous biological assays or to Home Depot for equipment to grow biological material. Bruce Ivins was successful because he had a full laboratory suite and starter material available to him, plus decades of experience in handling anthrax.

There are at least a dozen top BW threats, but under Project Bioshield we have vaccines for only two of them. Maybe in another ten years, we’ll have a few more vaccines, but certainly not twelve. For the 270 cities in the United States with a population of more than 100,000, only thirty-odd cities have Project Biowatch detectors. It’s a very expensive project to sustain against a wide variety of potential threats. ….I already mentioned the lack of vaccines and medical countermeasures for biological agents. The challenge was, and continues to be, that Big Pharma has no incentive to get involved in researching these specialized medical countermeasures. It’s too expensive, it’s not profitable, and it could lead to lawsuits if the drugs are incorrectly used.

… [W]e’ll never get adequate coverage for the entire United States, or even a majority of the nation’s major cities, because it is too expensive to run 24/7 and to test all the samples in a lab. Even with the proposed Gen 3 biowatch detector, which doesn’t exist right now, DHS plans to roughly double its monitors to cover sixty cities. Using point detectors for national special security events makes sense. Biowatch doesn’t.

Radiological Weapons

Radiological terrorism gets people excited because, even though the nature of radiological hazards hasn’t changed in more than six decades, there’s something about radiation that spooks us. The term “dirty bombs” has a sinister sound. But of all the terrorist CBRN hazards, radiological devices (RDD) are certainly not WMD. We have never had an RDD incident to date, and yet so many people like to worry about the loose or available radiological isotopes that could be grabbed up by terrorists.

I’m very critical about the approach to addressing radiological terrorism. It’s no surprise that the easiest way to reduce our risk in this area is to secure all the radiological material that industry uses and to place it in one location that could be guarded. Instead, because of NIMBY politics, the decision was made to close down a $9 billion nuclear material repository and to maintain the status quo of storing nuclear material in “temporary” storage near more than 120 nuclear facilities across the nation.

The Nuke Threat

[L]et’s look at the real 800-pound gorilla in the room. Some people fear that al Qaeda is going to somehow obtain a nuke from Pakistan, disable the safety mechanisms, and transport it to a U.S. city. Some fear that al Qaeda will build a crude nuclear bomb, using technical expertise and material through the global economy. The scenario of a 10-kiloton nuclear blast is what causes people to “lose sleep,” allegedly. And yet, if you examine the facts, it’s not likely at all that this is a credible scenario.

[N]ations with nuclear technology or materials need to consider whether the bomb will be traced back to them, and where the bomb might be used. It might not be in the United States, it might be in a neighboring country.

The number of people who would need to be engaged to get/build a bomb and move it to the United States, let alone engineer a successful detonation, would make this a complex operation that would be visible to law enforcement and the intelligence community.

We have no compelling evidence that any nation has provided a terrorist group with chemical or biological weapons – why on earth would they provide a terrorist group with nuclear weapons? It doesn’t make sense.

The “high-altitude EMP blast” scenario is particularly outlandish, suggesting that a terrorist organization would be able to move a ballistic missile to the coast of the United States and set off a megaton nuke 200 miles over the country just to collapse the electronic infrastructure and turn America into a pre-industrial society. There are better odds that an asteroid the size of Texas might collide with a major city within the United States.

Bottom line, we’re already petrified that al Qaeda is going to nuke America, even lacking any evidence that it has one or could get a nuclear weapon. So why does al Qaeda need a nuclear bomb? It already has accomplished its purpose of terrifying the country. And yet, we see the unfolding of this massive “Global Nuclear Detection Architecture” that’s designed to ensure our politicians can sleep well at night. We could cite the statistics – the hundreds of ports, the thousands of miles of border, the “second line of defense” – and ask is this the most effective way to address the challenge of a terrorist rad/nuke incident?

The scope of the global architecture keeps growing. In addition to the major air and sea ports and border crossings, the DHS Domestic Nuclear Detection Office has proposed going after all the smaller air and sea ports that cater to private vessels. And then there’s the idea of populating the major cities and interstate roads between cities with radiological monitors. Is this a sustainable plan? Is it really effective, considering the limits of radiological detection technology? I would argue, no. The false alarms and cost of maintaining such a nation-wide system are prohibitive, considering the very low probability of occurrence and other options available to the national security community.

But what if?

Let’s assume that, worst case, a nuclear bomb is smuggled into a major U.S. city. Let’s not pick New York City, that’s been debated enough. But say a nuke goes off in Atlanta or Chicago or Seattle. Let’s assume that the terrorists had a functional bomb that yielded a 10-kiloton blast, not a crude device that resulted in a 1-2 kiloton fissile. Certainly thousands of Americans would die and a city would be irrevocably damaged. But would the United States stop, falter, collapse as a nation? No. A single nuclear terrorist event is not an existential threat to such a massive country. It can be managed, and given all the effort already in place to prevent such an incident, it’s not what ought to be keeping us up at night.

If the current US approach to CBRN homeland security policy is wrong, what should we be doing instead?

[We] need serious reviews of the policies that are in place and to use [a] … “risk-based” management approach to ensure that we are spending our funds wisely.

We continue to view WMD or CBRN hazards as the threat – that’s a myopic focus. We need to look at the process by which terrorists develop their tools and understand that it is by defeating the terrorists that we can stop the CBRN threat. When you take a realistic look at the threat and what terrorists can actually do – outside of a television show like 24 – it’s not a difficult thing. We can do this more smartly.

[We] need to [stop] the loose use of the term “WMD.” It only confuses the discussion and presents an unachievable goal that obstructs serious discussion.

We need to clearly separate the concepts of how militaries defend against NBC weapons and how emergency responders address terrorist CBRN hazards.

We should not act as if a terrorist group has the capability to do as much damage as a nation with an active WMD program.

The Homeland Security Planning Scenarios have to be changed to reflect realistic and probable threats, not “worse-case” scenarios. By using the scenarios as the basis for national-level exercises, we risk the danger of overestimating the actual need for unique and specialized resources that may never be employed within our lifetimes.

We should not lose sight of the fact that the majority of incidents requiring federal response to state and local emergency responders will be for natural disasters and industrial accidents rather than WMD.

It actually is a question of “if, not when” we ever see a CBRN terrorist incident that results in mass casualties. We need a sustainable, effective approach, which requires us to stop overhyping the threat. It’s not September 12, 2001, anymore. We need to realistically assess the challenge and all possible threats – natural and man-made – and calmly, rationally, develop a plan that doesn’t bankrupt the annual operating budget.

None of us have enough money to provide perfect protection for everyone throughout the year, and there are better things to spend money on….

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The complete article, Homeland Insecurity: Thinking About CBRN Terrorism, is available at this link.