Cellphone sniffs out dirty bombs

[Cary Renquist <cary_rdsfe@pacbell.net>]

Article on a LLNL project:

  

<http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996766>



A smart phone that can detect radiation may soon be

helping the police to find the raw materials for

radioactive “dirty bombs” before they are deployed.

The phones will glean data as the officers carrying

them go about their daily business, and the

information will be used to draw up maps of radiation

that will expose illicit stores of nuclear material. 



The detector is the brainchild of engineers at the

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in

California, US, who developed it in response to the

rise in illicit trafficking of radioactive materials

(see graphic). Customs officers at ports and airports

already wear pagers that detect radiation. But any

radioactive material not picked up by border controls

can be hidden in towns and cities, with little chance

that it will be found. 

 		

Now LLNL engineers funded by the US Department of

Homeland Security have devised a way to tackle the

problem. They have turned a multi-function internet

cellphone into a wireless sensor that will feed data

into a new type of radiation monitoring network that

they are calling a RadNet.



The phone transmits radiation readings continuously

over an always-on internet connection to a central

computer. A GPS receiver in the phone labels the data

with a time and location, allowing it to be used to

build up a radiation map of a particular area.



<continue at website>

<http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996766>

************************************************************************

You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To

unsubscribe, send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu  Put the

text "unsubscribe radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail,

with no subject line. You can view the Radsafe archives at

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/