Los Alamos scientist invents new radiation detector
Safety concerns at Los Alamos National Laboratory — including serious missteps in its handling of toxic waste and radioactive materials related to nuclear weapons work — have made headlines in recent years. In 2017 alone, several workers were contaminated with radiation and another worker was burned when substances in an unlabeled container ignited.
Innovative efforts by lab scientists to help avoid such hazards receive far less attention, however.
Jonathan Dowell, who specializes in engineering physics, has patented a radiation-detection device that could make places like the Los Alamos lab safer for workers and also has applications for emergency first responders, security authorities and hospitals.
The small, 11-pound cube, dubbed a “lighthouse” radiation detector, uses a sweeping beam to zero in on radiation sources in seconds to reduce worker exposure. About the size of a jar of peanut butter, the detector can be sent into potentially contaminated areas on hazmat robots and also works as a handheld device.
The gizmo gets its name because it’s topped with a directional sensor, similar to a TV antenna and akin to a beam on a lighthouse, that scans an area in search of
radiation.
It incorporates some aspects of conventional detectors, Dowell said, but those versions have more limitations “when there are multiple radiation sources.”
Dowell, in conjunction with Tucson, Ariz.-based Quaesta Instruments, has patented and miniaturized this radiation detector under a cooperative research and development agreement between the lab and Quaesta. The research and development deal is a federal initiative that allows federal lab-developed technology to be shared with private industry and the public after it has been patented. Royalties are shared among the parties involved.
The detector is now on the market but is not yet being used at the Los Alamos lab.
“Because this is so new, its credibility is being established,” Dowell said, adding that he hopes for wider future use of the device.
It could be used to track inventory of radioactive materials at sites like university labs and hospitals and to find
contaminants at waste sites. In the case of a radioactive spill, he said, the detector could be used to specify the contamination area and to determine whether a cleanup effort was successful.
Dowell has given two demonstrations of the detector to potential buyers — one to a visiting Army National Guard civil support team from Kentucky and the other to the Los Alamos Fire Department.
“They were inspired by the detector,” he said, especially its ability to use Ethernet, connecting multiple computers at a command post with a first responder at a radiation emergency who can relay real-time information.
And in March, Dowell was invited by the U.S. Army, which manages the White Sands Missile Range, to demonstrate the lighthouse detector on a hazmat robot at Trinity Site in Southern New Mexico, where the world’s first atomic bomb was detonated July 16, 1945.
This was in part to confirm that the area was safe for visitors, Dowell said. His team spent most of one day moving the robot around the site and “documenting where ‘ground zero’ had taken place.” Radiation can still be detected at Trinity, he said, but in levels that are not harmful to casual visitors.
The price range for various versions of the lighthouse detector is between $12,000 and $18,000, said Quaesta business development director Steve Hamann.
Quaesta began marketing the detector last year and has sold about 80 to clients including government labs, universities and government contractors, Hamann said. The new device has an advantage over conventional radiation detectors because of its “greater mechanical ruggedness,” he said, which makes it “useful in field applications … in ground or aerial vehicles.”
Dowell came up with an idea for the portable lighthouse radiation detector when he was thinking about ways to solve the lab’s problem of how to clean dirty glove boxes — devices used by lab workers to safely handle radioactive materials and other dangerous substances. The sealed containers have gloves attached so workers can access the materials inside.
Glove boxes are normally cleaned before disposal and sometimes in preparation for new experiments.
Dowell wanted a way to determine if a glove box that had been washed after use still contained any radioactive contamination. He needed something like a TV antenna to stick through the box’s openings to find “hot spots” — specific areas with radioactivity. The lighthouse was born in 2012.