The Hidden Fight Against Radiological and Nuclear Threats

Quietly embedded in the nation’s highest-stakes moments, government scientists stand watch for invisible threats. From packed stadiums to disaster zones, the Nuclear Emergency Support Team’s Radiological Assistance Program deploys cutting-edge detection tools to identify and neutralize radiological and nuclear hazards before panic—or catastrophe—sets in. It’s a behind-the-scenes national security mission where science, speed, and precision keep the public safe.

Transcript

00:00:00 You don't want to freak anybody out when you're trying to keep them safe because panic is a hazard. Also, that's why we have concealments like backpacks. I'm just a girl with a backpack looking at my phone. Nobody's going to think twice about that. But that backpack, it might be the only thing standing between thousands of people and disaster. This is the team the government quietly

00:00:26 deploys for some of the countries and the world's highest stakes moments. Major sporting events, inaugurations, industrial accidents, or natural disasters. And they're on the hunt for something you can't see, hear, or smell. The thing that might surprise you, they're scientists. Really, we're the the nerds in your pocket who answer all your radiological health and safety

00:00:51 questions. We are from the government and we're here to help. This is Jessica. She belongs to a group of scientists called Nest. Within Nest, there's RAP, the Radiological Assistance Program. And for over 50 years, they've been who you call when something might involve the word radioactive. Nest is a set of teams of scientists, engineers, and technicians who go out into the

00:01:28 field and characterize radiological and nuclear information for emergency response efforts. We primarily are requested by other agencies because those other responders like the fire departments and the police departments, they have other threats to think about. We don't want them to have to think about the radiological health and safety hazard. One of the things we can do at

00:01:51 the request of law enforcement is something called preventative rad detection or PRND. We may be called to support a large sporting event or a large political event to rule out the presence of nuclear and radiological threats. We have detectors that are mounted in vehicles and detectors that can fit in backpacks and we canvas areas uh so either residential areas around a

00:02:14 stadium or inside of the venue and look for things that aren't supposed to be there of a radiological nature. These detectors are cintillator crystals and gas tubes that are looking for invisible signatures of radioactive material. But harmless background radiation is all around us, emitted by space, and by the Earth itself. So, how can you tell the difference between what's normal and

00:02:42 what's not? I would compare this to to shapes. So, the background has a particular shape that I'm looking for when I'm analyzing data. An elevated radiation signature looks a lot different from that background state. All of the sounds that we're hearing are the natural background that we're subject to every day. But this is Oh, there we go. That's Now all of my

00:03:05 detectors are very upset. It is a Cobalt 60 source. These are man-made and then placed on these little plastic discs. This feature on our waterfall chart, that's when I put in the cobalt source. So, if I saw this come up on my feed during an event, I would say, "Oh my goodness, what the heck is that?" The green overlay here is what's coming in from everywhere else. And the blue is

00:03:32 the signal that was generated by the source that I just put on the detector. So the source has a characteristic shape and you can see that it is well above background and that shape is what gives me some information about what the isotope might be. So how do you prepare to do all of this at an event filled with thousands of people? There's several years of effort that go into the

00:03:58 planning component of something like that. Then we would have several weeks leading up to that where we'd be on location with our region and other regions supporting uh just to have enough personnel to support the mission. And we run it like a fire station. It's it's 24/7 when we do ops like that. Uh there might be a vanguard that goes out several months before the event to

00:04:19 establish a background, may walk the empty stadium with backpacks, may drive around the residential neighborhoods and identify any sources of radiation that we can then dismiss as threat items later. One thing that comes up quite a bit are hospitals. So if we are driving by a hospital and we get a radiation signature, we characterize that signature. Then when we drive by it

00:04:43 during operations, those few weeks before the event, then it's something that we don't have to put as much bandwidth into figuring it out because we already have. Hospitals ping on Nest's radar because they can contain a lot of nuclear material, radiation for cancer treatments, some imaging and sterilization techniques, and lots more. And that's why the folks at Nest also

00:05:04 respond to incidents at locations like hospitals that may have resulted in potential contamination. They're also an essential part of emergency response in the wake of natural disasters that may have released anything radiological.
>> That's what we mean by consequence management is going in and characterizing a situation and assisting with cleanup in our PPE with our

00:05:23 equipment if if necessary. Uh this is a set of PPE we might put on to deploy into a contamination environment. So I would be taking my wagon pull of all of my meters and stuff down range. Um, we may be taking soil samples. We may be taking water samples. All of these things have particulates that could spread contamination. So, I have multiple layers of protection here to

00:05:50 keep me from getting contaminated.
>> But sometimes the work isn't at a national security event. It's at a house.
>> One of the members of the public had bought something on Craigslist. it was a desk and found items that had the radiation Tfoil symbol on them and posted that on Facebook and asked what what she should do about it and got a

00:06:14 lot of very unhelpful answers but a few very helpful answers. One of which said, "Hey, don't we have that lab down in the Bay Area? You should call them." When you hear the panic in someone's voice on on the phone over an issue like this, it's really heart-wrenching. I said, "Yes, I will come. I will come with the team." And we did. We went out to her house. So, this is a deployment, a real

00:06:36 deployment to a private residence with all of our all of our equipment, standard equipment, and found the items in in question and our our meters lit up. So, there was real radioactive material there. There were radium dials and thorium welding rods. This turned out to be a watchmaker's desk. She was very concerned about how much we were going to cost when we got there. She's

00:06:57 like, "Oh, so how much is this going to take? Like if there's radioactive waste, how much does that cost?" And I said, "No, no, you're paying your tax dollars. You we are a department of energy. We're a government function. We I say literally we are from the government and we're here to help."
>> Jessica is one of just a few members of RAP who's full-time. Teams operate out

00:07:16 of DOE labs, sites, and facilities around the country, including LNL. and many members volunteer on top of their full-time science jobs.
>> I feel like I have something important to wake up for every day. I really believe in the mission of the laboratory and in the national security mission of entities like Nest and like RAP. I want the public to feel safe and to enjoy the

00:07:42 events that they're there to enjoy and not have to worry about this type of stuff, any of the radiological things. people knowing that we're there looking for that stuff can put people at ease. So, being able to take all the stuff that I was super pumped on as a nuclear engineering nerd in school and actually apply that to my day-to-day work is a dream come true. And the fact that it

00:08:06 helps people have have confidence in our ability to keep them safe is is a bonus.
>> Pretty cool, huh? I think so. That's why I work here though because all this stuff is super interesting. All right, what else?