WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has failed to meet a legal deadline for scanning all shipping containers for radioactive material before they reach the United States, a requirement aimed at strengthening maritime security and preventing terrorists from smuggling a nuclear device into any of the nation’s 300 sea and river ports.
The Department of Homeland Security was given until July 1 to ensure that 100 percent of inbound shipping containers are screened at foreign ports.
But in a little-noticed action, the department’s secretary, Janet Napolitano, informed Congress in May that she was invoking a two-year blanket exemption because the screening is proving too costly and cumbersome. Implementation of scanning measures at the nearly 700 ports worldwide that ship to the United States would cost $16 billion, she said.
Instead, the department relies on intelligence-gathering and analysis to identify “high-risk” containers, which are checked before they are loaded onto ships. Under this system, fewer than half a percent of the roughly 10 million containers that arrived at U.S. ports last year were scanned before departure.
Those checks turned up narcotics and other contraband but there have been no public reports of smuggled nuclear material, the department says.
In response to the 9/11 Commission, Congress passed a law in 2007 that specified that no cargo container may enter the United States before it has been scanned with imaging equipment and a radiation-detection device.
The administration’s failure to meet the deadline has left some members of Congress and outside experts concerned about whether the administration is taking the threat seriously enough.
“I personally do not believe they intend to comply with the law,” Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., co-author of the 2007 law, said in an interview. “This is a real terrorist threat, and it has a solution. We can’t afford to wait until a catastrophic attack.”
Monitors scan 99 percent of the containers for radiation after they arrive at U.S. ports, the Department of Homeland Security says. But the monitors at U.S. ports, experts say, are not sophisticated enough to detect nuclear devices or highly enriched uranium, which emit low levels of radiation.
The Government Accountability Office has warned that a nuclear device could be detonated while at a port - containers often sit for days awaiting radiation checks - causing billions of dollars in damage in addition to the loss of life. Estimates of damage caused by a nuclear detonation at a major port range from tens of billions of dollars to $1 trillion.
Shipping containers are ideal for smuggling weapons, people and other illicit cargo; ensuring the integrity of the contents is difficult and costly. The standard container is 40 feet long and 8 feet tall and holds more than 30 tons of cargo. A large vessel carries 3,000 or more containers from hundreds of different shippers and many ports. A single container can hold cargo from many customers.
Counter terrorism experts have worried about port vulnerability since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the attacks, reportedly told interrogators he had considered sending explosives to the United States hidden inside a shipment of personal computers from Japan.
Graham Allison, a Harvard University political scientist and author of a best-selling book on nuclear terrorism, said that a nuclear device is more likely to arrive in a shipping container than on a missile. But preventing such an attack, he acknowledged, is expensive and there is no guarantee that prevention measures will work.
“The game between hiders and seekers is dynamic, and there is no 100 percent solution,” Allison said in an e-mail interview. “The cost benefit trade-off is the toughest issue.”
The costs of checking every U.S.-bound container could be substantially lower than the Department of Homeland Security estimates, Markey and some counter terrorism experts say, and the necessary measures could be easier to implement than the agency has suggested.
Research by scholars at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School indicate that 100 percent of containers could be screened much more inexpensively with existing methods. A number of companies also are developing cheaper screening technology.
Peter Boogaard, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman, said the department is committed to using a variety of measures, including screening, scanning and working with foreign authorities, to ensure that all goods are secure.
Pilot programs established to scan all containers were abandoned in 2009 after the agency said costs were too high and the effort led to cargo delays and logistical problems.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 07/16/2012