Harbor will be 2nd in U.S. to have all incoming cargo scannedThe Associated Press
Updated: 12:55 a.m. ET June 4, 2005
LOS ANGELES - The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will receive radiation detectors to scan every incoming cargo container for nuclear weapons or dirty bombs, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Friday.
The 20-foot-high devices, already in use in at seaports in Jersey City, N.J., and elsewhere, should be at the Southern California ports by the end of the year, Chertoff said. They are part of the U.S. government’s strategy to prevent a possible attack by terrorists using nuclear or radiological weapons at the nation’s busiest port complex.
“A key element of that strategy is detection,” Chertoff said after touring the waterways surrounding the ports aboard a Coast Guard ship. “If we know this radiological material is coming in ... we can take the appropriate steps to intercept a threat.”
About 4.3 million containers are shipped to the dual ports each year. The Southern California harbor will become the second major U.S. harbor to have all incoming cargo screened, Chertoff said.
more...Almost FOUR YEARS after 9/11, and we're barely protected against a nuclear device being detonated in one of our ports. Even these new detectors do not scan containers until they're off-loaded (meaning they could be detonated while aboard the ship). Of any threat I can think of, this one scares me the most - and, of course, the Bush admin
continues to ignore nuclear proliferation and the VERY REAL danger of former Soviet nukes falling into the wrong hands.
A nuke detonated in one of our busy, populated port cities would make 9/11 seem like a mosquito bite...:scared:
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