Thermo Fisher's radiation detection system available commercially

We note Thermo Fisher Scientific’s announcement that its Thermo Scientific ViewpointT Enterprise radiation detection system, inaugurated at the 2007 U.K. Labour Party Annual Conference, is available for wider security markets in the United States and abroad, including first responder, nuclear power, industrial, and medical facility protection. The 2007 Labour Party Conference was held in Bournemouth, Dorset, an event attended by more than 12,000 delegates, media, and exhibitors. The Dorset Police chose the Thermo Scientific radiation monitoring system to manage and monitor potential radiation threats during the conference. This was the largest security operation ever staged by the Dorset Police, involving more than 400 police officers.

The Viewpoint system comprises four components: the ViewPoint appliance with the ViewPoint data engine pre-installed; user workstations or viewing “clients” that the system will be deployed upon; instrument (input) device plug-ins; and client plug-ins. It is useful to look in some detail at the deployment of the system during the Labour Party conference. For that event, the data engine received information from the system inputs, a complete set of detection appliances that were installed at strategic locations within the conference site, and routed the input to the command center, which employed multiple workstation PCs for display, job coverage or database logging walk-through portals. The detection appliances were also used to equip a Thermo Scientific survey vehicle for a remote vehicle search site (RVSS) to screen vehicles entering the conference’s confines and to provide wide area radiological background trending. The survey vehicle, outfitted with gamma and neutron probes, an ADR air concentrator detector, a GID spectroscopy personal radiation detector (SPRD), and a RadEye PRD, also drove predetermined routes twice a day monitoring radiation levels and comparing them with previous background radiation surveys. In addition, the centralized communication network allowed the real time transmission of data, recorded by the Thermo Scientific detection appliances, to be sent to both the Dorset Police Winfrith Headquarters and to the Thermo Scientific RVSS via the ViewPoint system. The system, operated with Windows NT/2000/XP, produced real time dose readings and also GPS data that enabled police officers and Thermo Fisher Scientific personnel to specify the exact location of a radiological event.

During the conference, a Thermo Scientific TPM 903B transportable portable monitor was also utilized to ensure that nobody carrying potentially threatening radioactive materials would enter the conference site. All of the detectors at the U.K. event featured the inherent capability to clearly distinguish between naturally occurring radiation and radioactivity that is artificial and could pose a serious threat. “The ViewPoint system was easy to use and provided a high degree of confidence,” said Charlie Eggar, superintendent of the Dorset Police force. “The Thermo Fisher Scientific team fitted in very well with the CBRN operation and had the expertise to keep the systems working reliably. They also had the reachback capability to assist with the speedy identification of any alarm activations. This was demonstrated when alarms were set off by low level sources used in press cameras that caused an alarm to activate when a large number of cameras were grouped together.”