A Sensor That Tracks Cosmic Particles Could Spot Hidden Nuclear Threats Before They Cross Our Borders

By Mark Wolverton Posted 08.24.2010 at 9:08 am 13 Comments

How To Find a Dirty Bomb: As muons pass through the top and bottom detectors, their path builds a view of suspicious objects. Graham Murdoch

Smuggling a nuclear weapon into the U.S. is distressingly simple—all someone needs is a truck full of watermelons. Regulations prohibit using high-power x-rays on perishables, and Geiger counters don’t beep alerts because the juicy fruit absorbs radiation. But a new drive-through detector takes advantage of cosmic rays to locate any nuclear material, no matter how cleverly hidden.

Only a few percent of the 15 million or so cargo containers that enter the country every year are screened for nukes, a number that Congress mandates must be 100 percent by 2012. That benchmark is impractical using today’s tech, however. Standard detectors can miss nuclear material hidden behind lead or steel, and naturally radioactive cargo such as kitty litter gives false positives, requiring a labor-intensive hand-search.

A new detector from Decision Sciences, a security company in California, sees through anything and can scan a semi in less than a minute. It tracks muons, cosmic particles constantly bombarding Earth. Muons penetrate everything but are deflected more by heavy atoms such as uranium and plutonium. The detector tracks these deflections.

The company finished lab tests this spring and is now building detectors to deploy at several ports in the next year. “As long as it works quickly enough, it should fit the bill,” says Robert Dynes, a physicist at the University of California at San Diego who reviewed radiation detectors for Homeland Security. Tests indicate that the device should be speedy on real cargo, says Decision Sciences’s chief technology officer, Allan Wegner. And it’s nearly foolproof. Wegner can’t go into detail about its weaknesses (for obvious reasons), but he assures us that kitty litter and watermelons will no longer threaten national security.

How It Works

As muons come from the sky, they pass through the top detector, the truck and the bottom detector. The muons create ionization trails in the scanner's gas-filled detector tubes, which sensors record.
Heavy atoms, such as uranium and plutonium, deflect muons more than lighter ones do. If the angles of muons' entrance and exit paths vary by a wide magin, nuclear material could be present.
The detector also senses gamma radiation, which the computer combines with muon data to build a 3D view of suspicious muon-scattering objects, alerting customs agents exactly where to search.

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13 Comments

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RECoyote

08/19/10 at 4:28 pm

EVIL, SO VERY EVIL YALL.

What Evil person would depict Optimums Prime delivering a dirty bomb. Some one so Good.
Like having Marry Poppings kill the President.

I can tell the Artist Meant to do it, because Optimums is the Brightest, most Colorful, Best Detailed part of the two page layout.

For yall art this is much more color and detail than most.

Bad Artist for being so mean.
Stupid Editor for letting it go to print.

RECoyote

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phildo

08/24/10 at 9:47 am

im gonna make a fall out shelter out of watermelons.

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johnt007871

08/24/10 at 10:51 am

What about rail cargo? I assume trains cross broders too?

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johnt007871

08/24/10 at 10:58 am

@REcoyote
More than meets the eye indeed. Shame Prime, for shame...

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Setarip

08/24/10 at 1:52 pm

With a little help of google, I found that kitty litter is not radioactive. Why is it that almost all of popsci's articles have false info like this?

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jetfirechang

08/24/10 at 11:36 pm

first of all, it doesn't look like optimus prime. It doesn't have the right bumper

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jetfirechang

08/24/10 at 11:49 pm

@Setarip
Kitty litter is used to surround the bomb

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ibizanhound

08/25/10 at 2:45 am

I knew there was more to Optimus than meets the eye!

Sorry...
I had to throw that line :)

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RECoyote

08/26/10 at 12:34 pm

Its not a bumper, Its an Ali Arch Bull Bar.
They become Very popular in the last few years.

Other than that Its Prime.

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wnettles

08/26/10 at 9:37 pm

Sounds like it will work for vehicular traffic, and, I can envision a railcar version, but, what about that pesky Shahab-3 or that Taepoedong 2 missile that is neatly tucked into a cargo hold / launchtube inside of some junky old frieghter? Who's gonna put a detector under and over the ship while it meanders along the Mississippi river, just prior to it's nuclear EMP Apocalypse 300 miles over Kansas? Even if we can detect the launch, we will only have about 30 seconds to launch an interceptor missile volley and that just aint enough time, even if we had the ABM sites situated strategically around the nation, they were all working at 100%, they were all "hot", and there was a standing order to fire on warning. Basically, we are in deep dung.

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luckysaintluis

08/27/10 at 9:46 am

Still with that paranoid game of nuc attacks? The use of coacian and prosac should be prohibited to US regulators!

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