By Martin Matishak
Global Security Newswire
A truck pulls a shipping container through a portal radiation scanner at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in 2007. A U.S. Homeland Security Department office squandered years and hundreds of millions of dollars developing ineffective technology for spotting potential illicit nuclear material in U.S.-bound cargo, ranking lawmakers on a Senate committee said yesterday (Joe Raedle/Getty Images). WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Homeland Security Department has wasted several years and nearly half a billion dollars attempting to develop and deploy the next generation of radiation detection monitors, leaders of an influential Senate panel said yesterday (see
GSN, Sept. 13).
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and ranking member Susan Collins (R-Maine) also chastised the department for failing to prepare a strategic plan to prevent the smuggling into the country of materials that could be used in a nuclear attack.
The plan, dubbed the global nuclear detection architecture, was first suggested by the Government Accountability Office in 2001. It is intended to close existing vulnerabilities and alert federal agencies to their roles in preventing terrorists from detonating a nuclear or radiological bomb within the United States.
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