SFO, Livermore Lab team up for massive cargo screening

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Aug 18, 2006 | by Betsy Mason

Airports throughout the world are scrambling to close security holes following revelations last week of another terrorist plot to blow up airliners.

But San Francisco International Airport is ahead of the pack in closing one critical loophole: the lack of security screening of the commercial cargo carried on passenger jets.

In October, SFO is expected to become the first airport in the nation to check all commercial cargo for explosives on commercial flights.

The Department of Homeland Security announced in June that it would launch a $30 million pilot program at SFO in October and then expand it to two other unannounced airports.

Roughly half of the money will be spent at San Francisco.

"We're still on track for October," said Kandace Bender, an SFO spokeswoman said. "We lobbied hard to get the program. SFO has always been on the leading edge of safety."

Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and several other national labs are helping determine how best to utilize existing technology to screen all cargo on passenger flights.

"The information we gather will help DHS and other federal agencies decide where to invest their research and development dollars," nuclear chemist Howard Hall said in June when the program was publicly announced. The goal is to eventually have all 448 federally regulated airports in the country screen all of their commercial cargo that goes out via passenger flights.

"SFO is the first one we went to because it is the best," John Kubricky of Homeland Security said in June. "This time next year we're going to have the principles and lessons learned that we can roll out to all airports that also have air cargo across the United States."

Even without the pilot program, much of the 530,000 metric tons of cargo that rides on passenger flights in and out of SFO is already screened. Some cargo is prescreened by shippers, some is screened by the Transportation Security Administration and some is spot checked at random. But Homeland Security is hoping for a system to screen every piece without causing flight delays.

The solution likely will involve a number of technologies such as CT scanners, analyzers that test for traces of explosives residue, canine teams and manual inspections.

Livermore and other labs -- the Oak Ridge and Pacific Northwest national labs and the Transportation Security Laboratory -- will use simulations and computer models to determine how to best use those capabilities to handle 100 percent of the cargo.