WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department this month announced plans to prop up nanotechnology sensors at airports and other U.S. entry points for detecting nuclear substances, but there is no rollout timetable because of budget uncertainty, according to operators of the counterterrorism program.
The new nanotech sensors can be produced for less than .17 percent of the price of existing sensor technology, with the equivalent of $300 worth of current materials now costing 50 cents, scientists reported to Congress in 2010. The screening tools were created to elucidate concealed nuclear substances in border stations, cities and various ports of entry, said officials with National Security Technologies, which runs the department’s Nevada National Security Site. Many Energy laboratories and facilities are government-owned and contractor-operated.
"No timeline for deployment has been set," National Security Technologies spokesman Jeff Donaldson told Nextgov. "It will be based on funding availability, at the discretion of the National Nuclear Security Administration." The agency, part of Energy, is subject to the “sequester” -- default funding reductions mandated by a 2011 debt ceiling deal that took effect Friday.
Traditional sensor-making that requires growing big, fragile crystals to visibly illuminate nuclear radiation is more expensive than manufacturing bulk nanocrystals that fit into plastic, the 2010 report stated. The nanosensors are rugged enough to be embedded into large sheets of material for screening wide areas.
Since these detectors can be produced at industrial scale, many departments, including, for example, Homeland Security and Defense, could deploy them across high-population or vulnerable locations, scientists at the site said. The agencies’ ability to field the tools, again, would depend on future year budgets, they added.
Site officials said that, during the past year, they proved the sensors work at Nellis Air Force Base and now they are shifting to the production phase.
Novel Nanotechnology Sensors May Improve U.S. Nuclear Detection
March 4, 2013
WASHINGTON -- Scientists with the Nevada National Security Site are excited about the prospects for a novel technology that could improve U.S. efforts to detect nuclear or radiological materials that could be used in terrorist attacks within the United States.
The next-generation nanotechnology "seeds" plastics with substances that can detect sensitive substances and more ably determine what kind of radioactive material is present than other nuclear sensors. Older-generation nuclear detectors either come with high production and sustainment costs or have limited capacities to differentiate innocuous radioactive substances from dangerous materials, according to a press release.
The molecular-scale technology behind the sensors has been proven but is still awaiting determination by the Energy Department and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration on whether it should be graduated from the laboratory to manufacturing and deployment, said Dante Pistone, spokesman for National Security Technologies, which operates the Energy Department complex in Nevada.
"It's really up to DOE and NNSA," Pistone said in a Monday interview. "They've proven the technology. It's just a matter of funding and how it'll be used."
The nanotech sensors are envisioned as being fielded at airports, border checkpoints, and seaports, as well as around large U.S. cities.
National Security Technologies principal project scientist Paul Guss said the intent is to lower the costs for producing high-performing nuclear sensors. "It’s a lot less costly and so can be used to build bigger detectors. ...With the nanoparticles, it’s just like mixing salt and water. It's much cheaper."
The sensor technology could theoretically be used in hand-held monitor technology and for large portal monitors deployed at seaports and along railroad tracks. "You can have large detectors at many places that you couldn’t afford otherwise and you still would detect radiation," Guss said in a telephone interview.
Pistone said there is "no specific timeline" for moving the technology along the development pipeline.
The contractor's researchers began developing the sensor technology in 2009 after they saw an opening to leverage research being done on nanoparticles by scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Researchers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, performed numerous radiation transport modeling calculations to verify nanoparticles could viably be used as nuclear sensor materials while the Watertown, Mass.-based Dynasil Radiation Measurement Devices developed the process for distributing the particles into transparent plastic polymers for use in the detectors.
"By working together, we achieved results far beyond what any of the entities could have done individually," Guss said in furnished comments.
Details about the costs of the project to date and potential future savings were not immediately available.
Font: By Aliya Sternstein
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