US team in Georgia finds radiation monitoring sites damaged

WASHINGTON - A US government team, assigned to help local authorities detect nuclear smuggling in the Republic of Georgia but forced to flee the country after Russia's invasion in August, has returned and found that heavy fighting has damaged several locations where it was installing radiation detectors, according to Department of Energy officials.

When the fighting broke out, the National Nuclear Security Administration team was in the midst of installing the monitoring equipment at nearly two dozen border crossing, ports, and airports in Georgia.

Georgia has long been considered a hotbed for trafficking of radioactive materials from the former Soviet Union. In recent years, there have been at least two cases in which criminals attempted to smuggle nuclear material.

The US aid program in Georgia is part of a $250 million administration project to help roughly 40 nations improve their ability to detect small amounts of nuclear material or radioactive substances that terrorists could use to fashion a crude nuclear weapon or a radioactive 'dirty bomb.'

Since its return to Georgia, the administration team has found that sophisticated radiation detectors they installed in the port of Poti on the Black Sea - the nation's largest - were destroyed by a Russian bomb attack during the conflict and will have to be replaced.

"A cluster bomb spewed out a lot of shrapnel that penetrated the monitors - basically rendering them useless," said David Huizenga, director of nuclear security programs for the security administration, an arm of the Energy Department. Another Russian assault resulted in widespread damage at the Kutaisi Airport, where the US team had been working to install monitors when the two-week conflict erupted.

"We are working in the airport there and in the process of assessing the damage and to what extent it will slow us down," Huizenga said.

However, Huizenga expressed confidence that the Georgia program will pick up where it left off and finish work at all 20 sites by the end of 2009.