Last October a Houston police officer making rounds was startled to find his federally supplied radiation detector, one of 2,000 in the Houston metro and 56,000 nationwide, buzzing at high alert. The radiation detectors are provided by the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction office, created in 2018 to run for five years pending reauthorization by Congress. The office and its radiation detectors, which range from small hand units to truck-sized and helicopter-mounted devices, are intended to sniff out “dirty bombs” in major U.S. cities and at large public events such as the Super Bowl. The source of the October radiation alert in Houston turned out to be small flow gauges from a chemical factory containing cesium-137. With a 30-year half-life, it’s also found in medical devices, in nuclear reactor waste, and at the sites of nuclear reactor catastrophes. The canisters were found at a recycling scrap yard and sent to a U.S. Department of Energy waste site near San Antonio. — dhs.gov Jan. 5, 2024; USA Today Nov. 22, 2023
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