Bush Homeland Incompetence

It's no wonder the Neo-Con's want to "fight them over there", because when it comes to protecting the Homeland the Bush Administration is utterly worthless. Had this been real terrorists instead of a GAO 'test', the economy of Puget Sound could have been devastated for years.

PUBLIC SAFETY
Dirty bomb material crossed into state

JON GAMBRELL
THE BELLNGHAM HERALD

The Dec. 14 tests are the focus of a hearing today of the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, said Suzanne Trevino, a spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection in Washington, D.C.Trevino said two individuals in a car approached a border crossing. The radioactive material set off detectors at the border, alerting officers, she said.

At a secondary inspection, the officers found the nuclear material, Trevino said. However, the two individuals inside the car presented fake licenses and documentation from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, she said.

Because there is no method or database for customs officers to verify the licenses, they let the car go, Trevino said. However, she stressed those in the car had been stopped and that they carried only a small amount of the material.

"“Our system worked,"” Trevino said. "“Our CBP officers followed protocols."”...(full article)

The people on the frontline are doing their jobs and shouldn't be faulted. The Customs agents can only work with the tools they've been given. It's the upper levels of the Bush Administration that has completely failed us.
Naturally the Bush Administration is trying to down-play their most recent failure.

...Eliot Brenner, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said cesium was exempt from license or documentation requirements. He described the amount of cesium as negligible, saying it was the same amount of radioactive material found in home smoke detectors.

"The GAO really smuggled nothing. They were caught,"” Brenner said. "“The amount is insignificant. They couldn't contaminate the room I'm sitting in."

But it was anything but "insignificant".

The two individuals carried cesium-137, Trevino said. Typically used in gauges and in some cancer treatments, cesium-137 can also be used to create "dirty bombs" - explosives mixed with radioactive materials.

A cesium gauge attached to 10 pounds of dynamite could contaminate an area more than a mile long covering 40 city blocks, according to 2002 testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. While the resulting incidence of cancer would be one in 10,000, Henry C. Kelly of the Federation of American Scientists told the committee the area would have to be evacuated for decades if not decontaminated.

Contaminating 40 city blocks would economically devastate Bellingham (the first sizable city South of the Border crossing). Or... you pick a city along I-5.

The BBC has a facts sheet with a cesium-137 dirty bomb scenario - Dirty bomb facts

In January the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) very quietly issued guidance for responding to a terrorist detonation of a “dirty bomb.” DHS proposes permitting the public back into a contaminated area even if radiation doses are as high as 10,000 millirem per year (double what nuclear plant workers can legally receive). Over 30 years of exposure, that is the equivalent of 50,000 chest X-rays. The government’s own official risk estimates say such exposure would cause cancer in a quarter of the people exposed.

"Failure to restore important services rapidly could result in additional adverse public health and welfare impacts that could be more significant than the direct radiological impacts."

— DHS Guidelines

And there's Nuclear Power Plant incompetence too!!! NRC regulations still require reactors to have NO protection against air attack and only requires reactors to have security designed to withstand a ground attack by a fraction of the 19 terrorists involved in the 9/11 attack.

NRC says nuclear plants safe from attacks and productive

Thursday, March 09, 2006

By Bill Cahir

WASHINGTON -- Consumers should regard nuclear power plants as safe and consider them well protected from terrorist attack, according to the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission...

...Just as Diaz was praising the nuclear industry for its safety record, a watchdog group and a major union were taking the opposite stance.

Public Citizen and the Service Employees International Union held a news conference this week to claim that the NRC has erred badly by entrusting Wackenhut Services Inc., a private security company, to safeguard half of the nation's nuclear facilities...

Only their incompetence eclipses the cronyism and corruption of the Bush Administration and Congresses "Republican Majority".