6 U.S.C. § 592 — Responsibilities

(a) Mission. The Office^* must coordinate federal efforts to detect and prevent unauthorized importation, possession, storage, transportation, development, or use in the United States of a nuclear explosive device, fissile material, or radiological material. It must also protect the people, territory, and interests of the United States from attacks using those devices or materials. To do this, the Office must:

(1) be the main United States Government entity for further developing, acquiring, supporting deployment of, and improving over time an enhanced domestic system to detect and report attempts involving those devices or materials;

(2) improve and coordinate nuclear-detection work by federal, state^*, local, and tribal governments and the private sector for a managed, coordinated response;

(3) with the Secretary's approval and in coordination with the Attorney General and the Defense and Energy Secretaries, create domestic protocols and procedures ensuring that detection of unauthorized devices or materials is promptly reported to those officials and other appropriate officials or designees for action by law-enforcement, military, emergency^*-response, or other authorities;

(4) with the Secretary's approval and coordination with the Attorney General and the State, Defense, and Energy Secretaries, develop an enhanced global nuclear-detection architecture. The Office implements its domestic part; the Defense Secretary^* keeps responsibility for Defense Department^* requirements inside and outside the United States; and the State, Defense, and Energy Secretaries keep their respective responsibility for policy guidance and implementation outside the United States, consistent with law and relevant international arrangements;

(5) timely provide the expertise needed to correctly interpret detection data for all Office technology used in the global architecture;

(6) conduct, support, coordinate, and encourage an aggressive, expedited, evolutionary, and transformational research-and-development program to create and improve technology for detecting and preventing illicit entry, transport, assembly, or possible domestic use of nuclear devices or fissile or radiological material. The Office must coordinate with the Under Secretary for Science and Technology on basic, advanced, and transformational research relevant to both organizations;

(7) with the Defense and Energy Secretaries as appropriate, test and evaluate detection technology and set performance measures for individual detectors and systems: (A) under realistic operating and environmental conditions; and (B) against realistic adversary tactics and countermeasures;

(8) support and improve effective sharing and use of appropriate information from intelligence, law-enforcement, counterterrorism, other government agencies, and foreign governments, and provide appropriate information to those entities;

(9) improve and maintain continuous awareness by analyzing information from all detection systems related to the Office's mission;

(10) lead development and implementation of the national five-year strategic plan required by section 1036 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 to improve United States nuclear-forensics and attribution capabilities;

(11) establish a National Technical Nuclear Forensics Center within the Office for centralized stewardship, planning, assessment, gap analysis, exercises, improvement, and integration of all federal nuclear-forensics and attribution activities. The Center must (A) ensure a lasting national technical nuclear-forensics capability that strengthens the United States' collective response to nuclear terrorism or other nuclear attacks and (B) coordinate and implement the plan in (10);

(12) establish a National Nuclear Forensics Expertise Development Program. It must:

(A) develop and maintain a strong, lasting academic path from undergraduate study through post-doctoral study in nuclear and geochemical specialties directly relevant to technical nuclear forensics, including radiochemistry, geochemistry, nuclear physics, nuclear engineering, materials science, and analytical chemistry;

(B) (i) offer undergraduate scholarships lasting up to four years per student and, if possible, including at least one summer internship at a national laboratory or appropriate federal agency^* in technical nuclear forensics; (ii) offer doctoral fellowships lasting up to five years per student and, if possible, including at least two such summer internships, and require each recipient to serve for two years after graduation in a post-doctoral technical-nuclear-forensics position at a national laboratory or appropriate federal agency; (iii) offer faculty awards lasting three to five years to give faculty and graduate students sustained funding; and (iv) emphasize rebuilding technical nuclear-forensics programs while encouraging undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty from historically Black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, Tribal Colleges and Universities, Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institutions, Alaska Native-serving institutions, and Hawaiian Native-serving institutions; and

(C) (i) select scholarship and fellowship recipients competitively, mainly based on academic merit and the Government's nuclear-forensics and attribution needs; (ii) reserve up to 10 percent of scholarships or fellowships for federal employees to improve education in critical Government needs, with doctoral study available full-time or part-time; (iii) allow the Secretary to contract with a higher-education institution to pay scholarship tuition, fees, and other authorized expenses directly to that institution; (iv) require satisfactory academic progress; and (v) require repayment rules. A recipient who fails to maintain the Secretary's defined high academic standing, is disciplined out of school, or voluntarily ends training before graduating must repay the United States within one year after default all scholarship money paid to the recipient and institution, although the Secretary may extend the period by regulation. A recipient who, for any reason other than death or disability, fails to start or finish the required post-doctoral service must repay an amount equal to (aa) all scholarship money received and (bb) interest that would have applied if the money had been a loan at the maximum lawful rate;

(13) give Congress an annual report on work under (10), (11), and (12); and

(14) perform other duties assigned by the Secretary.

(b) Definitions. In this section:

(1) "Alaska Native-serving institution" has the meaning in 20 U.S.C. § 1059d.

(2) "Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institution" has the meaning in 20 U.S.C. § 1059g.

(3) "Hawaiian native-serving institution" has the meaning in 20 U.S.C. § 1059d.

(4) "Hispanic-serving institution" has the meaning in 20 U.S.C. § 1101a.

(5) "Historically Black college or university" has the meaning of "part B institution" in 20 U.S.C. § 1061(2).

(6) "Tribal College or University" has the meaning in 20 U.S.C. § 1059c(b).