Air Force Turns 747 Into Holster for Giant Laser (washing tonpost.com)

[Trei, Peter]

	Bill Stewart writes:

> Meanwhile of course, any foreign terrorist that wants to nuke the US
> with a physically small weapon only needs to pack it in cocaine
> and bring it in with the regular shipments, 
> while Rogue Nations that can only make large Fat Boy style weapons
> need cruder methods, like bribing a crane operator to load the wrong
> container on a ship bound for New York or Los Angelese harbor.
> 
> 
It may not be that easy. My understanding (based on various TV programs
broadcast back in the early 90's) is that there is a program called 'NEST',
which stands for something like Nuclear Emergency (mumble) Team,
tasked with dealing with this type of problem.

One protection hinted is that strategically chosen points of transit
(bridges, 
ports, tunnels, major highways, mail, baggage and freight facilities, etc)
have
detectors for nuclear materials. 

The thing is, while you can sheild a source to the point where it is not
a hazard, sheilding it to the point of *undetectability* is far harder task.

If you detect even a single gamma ray of a certain frequency, or 
betas or even alphas of certain energies, you *know* that a certain
isotope produced them. If the detectors note the presence of a 
certain isotopes, they generate the appropriate alarms.

There are also other detection systems - I've seen X-rays of entire
container trucks which were passing through the Chunnel - illegal 
immigrants were quite visible inside the container. 

An attacker's best chance would be to place his weapon in a
container, heavily sheilded, and then to bury that in the middle of
a stack of other containers of heavy shielding in the hold of a
container ship, and plan to detonate it while still on board in a
target harbor.

UPS probably would not work (besides, I think they have a 
limit of around 90 lbs). 

Peter Trei