This might sound like science-fiction, but considering how the United States has neglected its borders over the past century, it’s probably about time that we started pulling out the stops. From Wired News:
The border patrol has decided to go nuclear against those who want to sneak barrels of mustard gas, bales of marijuana or bundles of bucks into the country.
Starting early next week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, agents will start testing a nuclear scanning device, called a Pulsed Fast Neutron Analysis system (PDF), that will show a border agent the molecular construction of all materials in an 18-wheeler without the agent having to open the truck
The $10 million system, which CBP installed in an old cotton field next to the Ysleta border crossing near El Paso, Texas, shoots pulsed neutrons through a cargo container’s walls. Items in the trailer react to the mini-bombardment by emitting gamma rays. The machine then reads the gamma ray signature to create a three-dimensional rendering of the inside of the container.
The CBP’s traditional X-ray machines create a two-dimensional, gray-scale picture that shows the comparative density and shape of items. A border-protection agent then has to interpret the murky X-ray, just as a doctor does with a human X-ray.
But the new device’s manufacturer, Ancore of Santa Clara, California, says its Pulsed Fast Neutron Analysis, or PFNA, machine not only creates a 3-D view — it actually labels the parts. Thus the system can be configured to tell CBP officers that there are 100 kilos of cocaine hidden in a boxful of cheap DVDs or whether a barrel labeled “bleach” actually contains radioactive material.
Doug Brown, a nuclear physicist who now works as Ancore’s vice president of business development, calls the technology a “quantum leap,” comparing its advantages to those of MRIs.
“If you have a brain lesion, you can X-ray the hell out of your head and you will see the sockets for your eyeballs, your jawbone and your teeth, but you get no clue whether you have a lesion in your soft tissue,” Brown said. “An MRI, on the other hand, is able to locate that lesion in three dimensions, based on a signature that is different in the lesion than in the healthy tissue. Our technology works exactly the same way.
“A lot of threats are packed in barrels. An X-ray of a barrel would simply show a full barrel but wouldn’t tell you it was full of water, oil or explosives,” Brown said. “PFNA can determine what is in barrels.”
The technology is not new; it was developed in the late 1990s with federal funding from both anti-drug and antiterrorism efforts.
The technology was never put in place, however, since it was considered too expensive for drug-detection deployment.
But times have changed, according to Brown. “For the post-9/11 world, it’s a rhetorical question: How safe do you want to be?” Brown said.
Ancore’s champion in Congress is Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), a former Border Patrol inspector chief who has been pushing for the new technology since 1998.
Now, the congressman is “thrilled” that the Transportation Security Administration, the Pentagon and the CBP have agreed to sponsor the 90-day test. The TSA will soon be using the technology to screen cargo that goes into the bellies of commercial airplanes.
“This could be the most powerful technology in our war on terrorism,” said Reye’s spokeswoman, Kira Maas. “It really is incredible.”
Read the rest of the story here.
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