Slashdot Mirror
New Hand-Held Detector Determines Radiation Type
Red Leader writes: "This article covers a new portable radiation detector. A serious problem with conventional Geiger counters is that they don't indicate the type of radiation they're picking up. Thus, fissile material can be disguised as medical stuffs. This device uses a 'low-power cryogenic cooling mechanism originally designed for the aerospace industry' to cool a germainum detector rather than a really big thick-walled steel tank of liquid nitrogen."
As other psoters have mentioned, Uranium does not have medical uses.
However, Plutonium-238 was (is?) used as a power source in some pacemakers. It's not the bomb isotope, so I guess this detector will be able to tell the difference.