Award Data

Electron accelerators that produce high duty cycle electron beams with beam energies up to 9 MeV are essential for use in practical Nuclear Resonance Fluorescence and EZ-3DTM imaging technologies. While isotopic identification of shielded materials is now possible via these technologies, it is still necessary to achieve accelerator portability, compactness and reasonable cost of ownership to make ...

Non contact trace explosives detection has not been comparable to results obtained from wipe sampling. Many issues, including finding a method to release particles from a surface, efficient particle and vapor transport, and limited particle and vapor trap collection efficiency have all limited the process. Other related issues have included cost of ownership, ease of contamination removal, and com ...

The release of hazardous chemical vapors has the potential for severe casualties, and the detection of such chemicals is therefore critically important for homeland security. Despite this threat, there exists no commercially available, portable gas detection product that can quickly and cost-effectively sense most hazardous gases. In this Phase II project, we will develop a prototype gas detecti ...

In Phase I, the Peerless team developed an approach for an innovative wizard driven, turn-key, system that can be used by inexperienced operators to quickly design new sensor networks and evaluate existing sensor networks for the protection against and detection of CB agents within public structures. For Phase II, Peerless will conduct three development spirals to build the prototype system, valid ...

The proposed research is to develop the prototype of a handheld first responder bioterrorism agent (BA) detection system that is threat level responsive, simple, stable and rapid for analyzing suspicious powders or aerosols for the presence of nucleic acid (NA) from BAs. Investigen¿s ¿smartDNA¿ system uses peptide nucleic acid probedye cocktails to promote a rapid color change when hybridized t ...

Alameda Applied Sciences Corp proposes to develop a fast pulse, portable, fast neutron source to detect SNM in the field. Our source offers a less than 100ns neutron pulse with a repetition rate up to 100Hz. The goal is to develop a source with 1000hrs of continuous operation at greater than 1E8 n/s. The Phase II program will develop and validate a prototype for SNM detection. The commercial goal ...

A pulsed neutron generator is proposed for the detection of special nuclear material. A recently developed microwave-excited plasma neutron generator will be pulsed to produce the activating neutrons whose pulse lengths vary from 100 microseconds to 2 ms with a fall time of less than 1 microseconds. We demonstrated that we can increase the peak yield as a function of either RF or microwave power, ...

Gamma-ray spectrometers consisting of inorganic scintillators coupled to optical detectors such as photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) are an important element of the systems that are used to monitor and prevent the spread of special nuclear materials. Two very important requirements for the scintillation detectors used as gamma-ray spectrometers in homeland security monitoring include high sensitivity a ...

The use and applications of radiological sources, for power, medical, and defense applications, continuously increases with time. Illicit nuclear materials represent a threat for the safety of the American citizens and the detection and interdiction of a nuclear weapon is a national problem that has not been yet solved. This represents an enormous challenge to current detection methods and monitor ...

Proliferation of the weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear weapons is a serious threat in the world today. Preventing the spread of nuclear weapons has reached a state of heightened urgency in recent years, especially since the events on September 11, 2001 and its aftermath. One way to passively determine the presence of nuclear weapons is to detect and identify characteristic signatures of ...