Meet NEST: America’s Secret Nuclear First Responders

For fifty years, the Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST) has quietly served as America’s frontline response to nuclear threats. Composed of scientists, federal law enforcement agents, and regulatory experts with high-level security clearances, NEST operates much like an elite, high-security volunteer squad. The team’s mission includes detecting, responding to, and mitigating nuclear incidents—from “dirty bombs” to nuclear device threats. Nuclear materials are common in daily life, even in medical imaging, which recently triggered a NEST response over a “radioactive” puddle in a parking lot, traced back to a medical isotope from a patient’s bodily fluids.

With a history rooted in Cold War tensions, NEST has been deployed to handle events such as the 1978 Soviet satellite crash in Canada and the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan. NEST members train regularly, performing helicopter-based radiological sweeps over major events like the Super Bowl and political conventions. Equipped with radiation-detecting helicopters and tools for analyzing radioactive materials, they’re ready to deploy within hours in response to potential nuclear crises. Although many of its operations are classified, NEST’s goal is to keep the public safe while avoiding an aura of secrecy—a mission that, as NEST’s leaders say, “helps people sleep at night.”

Source: NPR