Description
Despite numerous attempts from terrorist organizations to use a radiological dispersal device (RDD) against the United States, our nation has never identified a lead agency to address RDDs nor established a center of excellence to capitalize on the science and technology efforts of our nation’s best scientists and engineers. While the DOD certainly has a part to play in the RDD arena, identifying one of the national laboratories to oversee the collaborative efforts of all the federal agencies involved is perhaps the best way to capitalize on the investments made to ensure our nation and its citizens remain safe following a potential RDD attack. The results would be catastrophic if a terrorist organization were able to get a nuclear weapon to use, but it is much more likely that our nation will experience a RDD attack rather than a nuclear attack due to the commercial availability of radioactive materials throughout the world. The lack of a lead agency to oversee a consolidated approach in RDD research has left our nation unfocused in its research efforts delaying sound consequence management efforts. Argonne National Laboratory provides a unique advantage to serve as a national center of excellence due to its subject matter expertise and current R and D projects across the RDD spectrum. Establishing a national RDD center of excellence and locating it at Argonne refocuses our nation’s attention on RDDs and the best method to focus future R and D efforts to meet those challenges. This paper first addresses the credibility of the threat of terrorist organizations attempting to acquire and employ a RDD against the U.S. and its allies. This drives the second part of the paper, which discusses whether a legitimate need exists to establish a national center of excellence for RDDs. Not only will the benefits of having a national center of excellence be presented, but also the current research efforts that are occurring at Argonne National Laboratory and its collaborative
