And we are paying to train foreign respondent's, ....why?

From reader WJ

By KEITH ROGERS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

MERCURY — In today’s world it could be called the University for Dirty Bomb Studies.

Founded in 1998, it was a niche at what was then the Nevada Test Site for emergency responders to learn how to deal with disasters caused by weapons of mass destruction.

Since then, about 180,000 firefighters, police officers, public safety officials and hazardous materials technicians from all corners of the United States have completed courses that teach them how to detect, prevent and react to an unthinkable act involving radioactive or hazardous materials to harm civilian populations.

In a few months this Center for Radiological/Nuclear Training will enter a new, international dimension as police officers from eastern Europe and elsewhere outside the U.S. descend on a one-of-a-kind training facility in Area 1 at the Nevada National Security Site, 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Known as “T-1,” the site is unique because it was ground zero for the Apple-2 nuclear test, a large-scale civil defense experiment in 1955 that used an atomic bomb placed on a tower to blow up buildings and structures in “Survival Town.” The blast delivered an explosive yield equivalent to 29,000 tons of TNT, or 8,000 more than the nuclear blast at Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945, the second and last time a nuclear weapon was used in combat.

The Apple-2 detonation left a higher-than-normal level of background radiation in the immediate area that, while safe to access 60 years later, is ideal for students to learn how to use hand-held and personal radiation detectors to interpret their readings from a previously contaminated area.

“The T-1 training area is unique and cannot be replicated,” Nevada National Security Site spokesman Darwin Morgan said in an email Friday.

“It is an important asset for first responders in the United States — and eventually from other countries — because it provides them practical hands-on experience to learn about radiation, contamination and decontamination,” he said.

PROJECT MERCURY

The first wave of foreign students is expected to arrive in September for Project Mercury, a $500,000 pilot program that will bring first responders from Interpol, the world’s largest international police organization.

While the cost of the security site’s counterterrorism effort is $22 million funded annually by the Department of Homeland Security, the $500,000 for the inaugural Project Mercury trial course comes from the Department of Defense, a Pentagon official said Friday.

He said the money covers training for “a small contingent of foreign first responder personnel” sponsored by Interpol.

The official, a spokesman for the office of the Secretary of Defense, added that future funding avenues exist in “several programs that build partner capacity to deal with the full range of threats associated with” weapons of mass destruction.

One, he said, focuses on teaming with other nations to ensure there will be safe and successful responses to nuclear incidents.

Other Defense Department programs are aimed at reducing the threat posed by the movement of radioactive materials across borders, and building the capacity of countries to reduce threats within their borders or region, including countermeasures to thwart smuggling of nuclear materials.

Project Mercury comes at a time of heightened awareness about radioactive materials from nuclear medicine sources, research reactors or even power reactors falling into the hands of terrorists, said Brian Richardson, training supervisor for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Counter-Terrorism Operations Support Team.

“Currently several terrorist organizations are attempting to get radiological material for a radiological dispersal device, or dirty bomb. Others are actually trying to acquire a stolen nuclear weapon,” he said.

While a so-called dirty bomb wouldn’t erupt into a nuclear chain reaction, explosives could scatter radioactive material over a widespread area, requiring years to clean it up to make it accessible again.

Another fear is that terrorists in possession of special nuclear materials could detonate a device that exposes people to harmful radition that could kill or severely injure them, he said.

http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/military/foreign-dirty-bomb-responders-will-start-training-nevada