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New Hand-Held Detector Determines Radiation Type

Posted by timothy on from the camcorder-batteries dept.

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."

4 of 18 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Question... by akiaki007 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Medical personalle will not be carrying Uranium on a plane.

    --
    "Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
  2. Re:Question... by JabberWokky · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Yes, but radioactives are shipped via plane, and passanger airliners often carry cargo as well.

    But that's not the point here - this is for scanning packages in bulk at customs, etc. Basically this allows anybody to seperate out non-medical controlled radioactives from medical controlled radioactives.

    --
    evan

    --
    "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
  3. Re:Question... by calidoscope · · Score: 3, Interesting
    As other psoters have mentioned, Uranium does not have medical uses.

    The advantage of the GeLi detectors is very good energy resolution for gamma rays, but they do need to be cooled. The breakthrough is using a portable cooling source so you don't need to drag an LN2 dewar around.

    "Uranium is uranium" is a big misunderstanding on your part - U-238 and U-235 have very different properties (and distinct gamma spectra). It would be extremely helpful to know if a Uranium sample was depleted, natural or highly enriched.

    --
    A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
  4. Re:Question... by mmontour · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.