Stopping Loose Nukes (detection technology)

[Chuck Cooper <cooperc@teleport.com>]

 From WiReD's November issue now online:



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Stopping Loose Nukes



Prevention is a game of odds, not certainty.



By Steven Johnson



I'm standing near a row of deserted loading docks in Billerica, 

Massachusetts, and George Kinsella hands me a vial of cesium 137. 

"This," he says, "is the kind of radioactive material you might see in a 

dirty bomb."



As radioactive substances go, cesium 137 leads a fairly innocuous 

existence as a component of industrial instruments such as moisture 

gauges. Mishandled, though, it can cause severe burns or genetic 

defects, as it did at Chernobyl. I hand the vial back, fighting the urge 

to wash my hands, and Kinsella places it inside the trunk of a Mercedes 

sedan.



Then he shows me a black canister the size of a soup can: Wrapped in a 

shielding layer of tungsten, it contains cobalt 57. He climbs into a 

cargo container on the back of a flatbed truck and puts the canister 

down near the center.



The whole exchange looks like the kind of transaction that keeps Tom 

Ridge awake at night. As it happens, the loading docks belong to 

American Science and Engineering, the company where Kinsella works as 

principal software engineer, and he's preparing to demonstrate its 

MobileSearch X-ray and radiation sensor technology. For the past decade, 

the 44-year-old firm has developed X-ray scanners that help customs 

officials detect contraband in the war on drugs; now it's one of a 

handful of companies racing to manufacture devices that detect nuclear 

and radiological weapons.



=======SNIP========



Continued at:



http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.11/nukes.html



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