KLAS-TV Channel 8 News Las VegasI-Team: First Responders Get Radioactive Ready
Ask any veteran police officer or firefighter, and nuclear response training was not part of rookie package. But times have changed and so has training.
Since 9/11, the Nevada Test Site has hosted thousands of first responders to teach them the basics of radiation. One of the very first goals is to overcome an emotion that is nearly synonymous with the term nuclear -- fear.
When you think of the Test Site, images of mushroom clouds probably come to mind. From 1951 through 1962, the United States conducted more than 100 above-ground nuclear tests.
Today, the background radiation is still more than 10 times normal, making it the perfect place to play a high-stakes game of nuclear hide and seek.
"We're checking for gamma at a rate of 500 microREMs per hour." You are on nuclear patrol with Tom Rabb from the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police, "Climbing, climbing, climbing. 400. Okay, right here."
Like so many first responders, Rabb says this kind of training is essential in today's security climate.
"In law enforcement, homeland security, terrorism, the terrain is changing. Our jobs are changing. We're being tasked with more and more things, homeland security being one of them, and radiation is a definite concern," he said.
The National Nuclear Security Administration runs the program with a grant from the Department of Homeland Security. At a mock city deep inside the test site, the nation's first responders are searching for hidden nuclear sources.
For Fire Captain John Bostwick, radiation is a challenge he simply never considered as a rookie firefighter. Bostwick now leads the hazmat unit of the Prescott Arizona Fire Department.
"In my small community, we're trying to get our team up to be able to respond to any type of terrorist attack in the United States, at least in our area and within the state," he said.
The radioactive sources are placed in areas that police or firefighters might encounter on everyday calls.
The radiation source, called Cesium-137 is inside a container. When this cap is popped off, it sends out a radioactive beam that the students can detect from dozens of feet away.
Smitty Smith is a class instructor. He says radiation sources are placed to simulate the effects of a radiation dispersal device, or RDD, also called a dirty bomb.
"If there was an incident like an RDD or a dirty bomb and we had locals or just everyday people become contaminated and then they went to go about what they normally do without knowing they were contaminated," he said.
A dirty bomb is any conventional explosive laced with radioactive material. They can come in many forms, like one discovered in Moscow in 1995.
The main tool of trade is what's technically called a Ludlum 14c nuclear detector.
The terminology is technical, but for Brady Johnson from the Birmingham Alabama Fire Department, the class takes some of the mystery, and the fear, out of radiation.
"You know that you are not going to be disintegrated if you walk through the radiation beam. There's a certain amount of time you have to operate," he said. "So I have confidence that if I had to do something like that, that my instrument is correct and I can do what I need to do."
By the time this group leaves here after a full week of classroom and field experience, they are expected to return to their hometowns with knowledge gathered through a half a century of nuclear experience at the test site.
The program costs taxpayers about $30 million each year, money that comes from the Department of Homeland Security. It goes without saying that these first responders hope they will never have to use the skills they learned at the test site.
