The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) sent the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine an emergency shipment worth approximately $2.3 million after 29 radiation portal monitors were destroyed in Ukraine in fighting between the government and separatists.
NNSA spokeswoman Francie Israeli offered more details by email after a June 17 Government Accountability Office report highlighted the destroyed equipment.
Israeli said the destroyed monitors were worth $3.9 million and that they had been deployed at six locations in Ukraine and six locations in Crimea. The following emergency shipment in July 2014 of 700 personal radiation detectors cost approximately $400,000, she said; the pagers were deployed at checkpoints near Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.
The Border Guards also received between June 2014 and March 2015 eight mobile detection vans worth approximately $1.6 million, five radiation detection backpacks worth about $100,000, and 63 high-sensitivity radiation pagers worth around $200,000, Israeli said.
She noted that the agency’s Nuclear Smuggling Detection and Deterrence (NSDD) program has provided approximately 500 radiation portal monitors at vehicle and rail border crossings, airports, and seaports in the country since 2006.
Israeli previously said the last occurrence of severe nuclear material detection equipment damage from conflict was in Georgia in 2008, during the country’s war with Russia over the breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions. On Friday, she specified that eight radiation portal monitors at three locations in Georgia were severely damaged during this time, and that the NSDD program spent approximately $500,000 to repair and replace this equipment.
