Drug War Goes Nuclear

We can all joke about irradiating school lunches, after all, who cares? But when the feds start nuking coke and pot shipments, you know it is serious business.

The Pentagon's Counterdrug Technology Development Program Office wants comments on a plan to build a giant truck nuker at a port in El Paso. The Pulsed Fast Neutron Analysis Cargo Inspection System would be housed in a building 220 feet by 60 feet and would bombard unoccupied trucks and their cargo with neutrons. Unoccupied, huh? Hmmmm. The neutrons are supposed to produce a gamma ray reaction in their targets, with different substances giving off differing gamma ray signatures. (Aside: Would a truck load of poppy-seed bagels… ah, nevermind.)

DoD says the PFNA process can detect explosives and drugs in a lab setting, so now it is time for a field unit. It promises radiation shielding sufficient to prevent all but "minute amounts" of radiation from escaping. The Pentagon adds that, "It is believed that the PFNA inspection system is safe, with exposures to radioactive materials and ionizing radiation to thegeneral public and US Customs personnel well below Federal and State standards. The facility design, including radiation shielding, will be designed to ensure that levels of exposure will be statistically indistinguishable from local area background."

That may be all well and true, but when I hear the feds are monkeying wih gamma radiation in the American Southwest, I think of one thing: Where the hell is Bruce Banner?

(via Cryptome.)