HOUSE ENERGY PANEL URGES MORE RADIATION DETECTORS IN PORTS

HOUSE ENERGY PANEL URGES MORE RADIATION DETECTORS IN PORTS    House Committee on Energy and Commerce Chairman W.J. “Billy” Tauzin, sent a letter this week to Tom Ridge, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, calling for the rapid deployment of systems capable of detecting nuclear and radiological material in cargoes entering U.S. ports.
   Calling the pace of deployment of such detectors “dangerously slow,” Tauzin told Ridge, “the most disheartening fact to consider is that, at the vast majority of U.S. ports of entry, (U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection) still relies on personal radiation pagers as the chief means to detect smuggled nuclear or radiological material. These pagers simply cannot perform this function effectively, given the well-documented limitations of such devices.”
   The Virginia Ports Authority's port of Norfolk was the first U.S. port to install radiation portal monitors in November. The port authority plans to install nine such monitors as part of its overall port security plan during 2003. 'The cost of the entire project is approximately $1 million. This effort was conceived and executed solely by the private sector,” Tauzin said.
   “We believe it is essential to provide adequate and technologically sound equipment, such as handheld isotope identifiers and radiation portal monitors, to the men and women protecting our ports and borders. However, lack of adequate funding threatens to stymie the current efforts to secure our nation against nuclear terrorism. Customs has spent $21.3 million in reprogrammed funds to deploy radiation portal monitors in fiscal year 2002. This funding will be exhausted at the end of April, 2003,” Tauzin noted. He said his committee would ask Congress for an additional $110 million “specifically set side for radiation portal monitors.”
   In addition to Tauzin, the letter to Ridge was signed by Reps. John D. Dingell, ranking member of the House Energy panel; James C. Greenwood, chairman of its subcommittee on oversight and investigations, and Peter Deutsch, ranking member on Greenwood’s subcommittee.