Redesigning radiation monitors at US ports

Every time astatine ports of entry, hundreds of thousands of vehicles and containers transverse into the country. Since 9/11, each incoming vehicles and containers astatine onshore crossings, obstruction crossings, message facilities and shipping terminals are scanned by Customs and Border Protection officers to observe imaginable threats, including radiation.

It is present clip to regenerate and upgrade the aging radiation detection systems earlier the extremity of their effectual life.

The Department of Homeland Security turned to Sandia and Pacific Northwest nationalist laboratories to make the blueprint for a caller procreation of radiation portal monitors that yet volition regenerate much than 1,400 monitors deployed crossed the United States. Homeland Security manages the enactment done its Radiation Portal Technology Enhancement and Replacement task for the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office.

The blueprint, known arsenic the interface specification, outlines a redesigned radiation portal show based connected modular, open-systems architecture. That allows upgrades oregon replacement to each module oregon portion successful the strategy arsenic caller technologies emerge, oregon arsenic caller threats arise, without replacing the full system, said Will Johnson, a Sandia physicist.

The modular design includes built-in diagnostic tools for state-of-health monitoring and predictive attraction and is expected to simplify upkeep and upgrading of the monitors implicit time, lowering the government's beingness operating costs.

The plans besides marque imaginable enhanced threat detection by deploying the astir precocious alarming algorithms successful the caller monitors, portion collecting the information to make adjacent amended algorithms successful the future.

"This means scanning cargo and conveyances to observe radiological and atomic threats with a greater level of accuracy, resulting successful accrued protection, decreased costs and reduced delays astatine ports of entry," Johnson said.

Cutting down connected the fig of nuisance alarms means less vehicles and containers volition request secondary inspection, truthful the travel of commercialized and commerce astatine ports of introduction volition support moving, adjacent though these much delicate detectors tin amended observe atomic oregon radiological threats.

"Our enactment connected this task is simply a truly bully illustration of utilizing Sandia's radiation detection hardware expertise and our atomic menace detection cognition and systems engineering capabilities, portion partnering with different labs for their heavy operational and investigating experience," Johnson said. "This has been a tremendously palmy concern to lick a nationalist information challenge."

To trial and validate the imaginable capabilities of the interface specification, the squad constructed a proof-of-concept objection portal astatine Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Interdiction Technology and Integration Laboratory. The Department of Homeland Security is engaging manufacture partners done a national acquisition process. Once awarded a contract, vendors volition usage their acquisition and expertise to make idiosyncratic modules oregon devices to integrate with existing infrastructure.

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