	Introduction

The attacks of September 11, 2001, prompted an increased federal focus on protecting the United States against terrorist nuclear or radiological attack. History and Background

The ASP program is an effort by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to develop, procure, and deploy a successor to the existing radiation detection portals. Radiation detection portals, also known as radiation portal monitors, are designed to detect the emission of radiation from objects that pass by them. The current portals are generally deployed at the U.S. land and sea borders by DHS's Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) and operated by DHS's Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Current DHS procedures generally include the following steps: When entering the United States, cargo conveyances, such as trucks, pass through a radiation detection portal. (If primary screening detects a potential threat, secondary screening is undertaken to confirm the detection and identify the source.) Congress faces policy issues in several areas: the effectiveness of ASP technology at detecting and identifying threats, the ASP program's costs relative to its benefits, the Secretary's criteria for determining whether ASPs will provide a "significant increase in operational effectiveness," and future actions following secretarial certification. The ASP technology would integrate the tasks into a single step. These recommendations included
that DHS take an iterative approach with modeling and physical testing complementing each other in order to make the testing and evaluation more scientifically rigorous; that DHS employ an iterative process for incremental deployment and continuous improvement, with experience leading to refinements in both technologies and operations over time, including deploying currently unused low-rate initial production ASPs at various sites to assess their capabilities in multiple environments; and that DHS not proceed with further procurement until it has addressed the findings and recommendations of the NAS report and the ASP is shown to be a favored option in a cost-benefit analysis. Based on the cost-benefit analysis performed then, DHS stated that the value of the reduced impact on commerce outweighed the cost of the ASP program and caused deployment of the ASP systems to be a preferred outcome. Additional DNDO cost-benefit analyses are to be used as input to the Secretary's certification decision. Congress is likely to continue to be interested in the scope of the ASP program, its total cost, how ASP systems would be deployed, the calculated benefits of that potential deployment, and the degree to which this next-generation technology increases homeland security. The decision to proceed with full-scale production of the ASP system is no longer coupled to the secretarial certification. Instead, the secretarial certification and the full-scale production decision will be made separately. Congressional committees have held several series of oversight hearings on the ASP program. It would have required the Director of DNDO to analyze and report to Congress on "existing and developmental alternatives to existing radiation portal monitors and advanced spectroscopic portal monitors that would provide the Department with a significant increase in operational effectiveness for primary screening for radioactive materials."
The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is charged with developing and procuring equipment to prevent a terrorist nuclear or radiological attack in the United States. At the forefront of DNDO's efforts are technologies currently deployed and under development whose purpose is to detect smuggled nuclear and radiological materials. These technologies include existing radiation portal monitors and next-generation replacements known as advanced spectroscopic portals (ASPs).
Customs and Border Protection officers use radiation portal monitors to detect radiation emitted from conveyances, such as trucks, entering the United States. When combined with additional equipment to identify the source of the emitted radiation, radiation portal monitors provide a detection and identification capability to locate smuggled nuclear and radiological materials. The ASPs currently under testing integrate these detection and identification steps into a single process. By doing this, DHS aims to reduce the impact of radiation screening on commerce while increasing its ability to detect illicit nuclear material.
The speed of ASP development and deployment, the readiness of ASP technology, and the potential benefits of the ASP program relative to its cost have all been topics of extensive congressional interest. Congress has held oversight hearings on the ASP program since 2006. Additionally, since FY2007, Congress has each year required that the Secretary of Homeland Security certify that ASPs will result in a "significant increase in operational effectiveness" before DHS can obligate appropriated funds for full-scale ASP procurement. Secretarial certification for use in secondary screening is still pending. Certification for use in primary screening is no longer being pursued. The DNDO states that the secretarial certification and the full-scale production decision will be made separately.
Laboratory and field tests of the ASPs, cost-benefit analyses, and other activities are under way to inform the Secretary's certification decision. Among the issues Congress faces are whether to further define the expected performance of the ASP systems through additional legislation; how to assess whether the ASP systems are technologically ready to be deployed; how to weigh the potential economic and security benefits of ASP deployment against its financial cost; and whether the certification process developed by DHS to establish a "significant increase in operational effectiveness" is well founded.