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Briefly noted
The financial crisis and homeland security… Airport security: shoe salvation has arrived… UNDT to market anthrax detection equipment in Israel… Canada’s new emergency management and business continuity standard
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DHS, NSF announce $3.1 million awards for radiological detection
DHS and NSF give awards to academic institutions to advance research in radiological and nuclear detection
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Breakthrough: Radioactive waste may no longer be dangerous to store
Aussie researchers have created a material which has the potential to filter and safely lock away radioactive ions from waste water; nanofibers which are millionths of a millimeter in size could permanently lock away radioactive cations by displacing the existing sodium ions in the fiber
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DSRL in £13 million Dounreay decommissioning contract
Britain’s Dounreay fast reactor was proclaimed as “the system of the next century”; this was in the 1960s; the last 15 years have seen the site develop into a nuclear reactor decommissioning project
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Russia to build IAEA-supervised nuclear fuel bank
The nuclear fueled bank would allow countries, including Iran, to develop civilian nuclear power without having to enrich their own uranium, thus allaying fears over nuclear weapons proliferation
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Briefly noted
DoE’s networks open to cyberattacks… WiMax emulator debuts… DHS’s radiation program to exceed initial cost estimates…
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New nuclear watchdog created
Anti-proliferation activists create the World Institute for Nuclear Security; funded with private and government funds, it will be headquartered in Vienna — next to the IAEA; it aims to facilitate sharing information to improve security at the world’s nuclear sites
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Seucring airports by reading people's minds (or bodies)
DHS is testing a machine which, from a distance, senses changes in individuals’ perspiration, respiration, and heart rate typically associated with anxiety one feels before committing a terrorist act
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Infrared lie detector
Rather than measure what are taken to be the symptoms of lying — increased heart and respiration rate, perspiration — new infrared detector measures brain activity
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Treasury grants cannot be used for chemical detection
The federal government told the Boston transit authority and other municipal transportation agencies that they cannot use anti-terrorism grants to install chemical threat detection systems at subway stations
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NYC receives $29 million to detect and prevent nuclear, radiological attack
DHS awards New York City $29 million under the Securing the Cities initiative
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Using quantum physics to make better detectors
MIT researcher shows how entanglement, a peculiar property of quantum physics, may be harnessed for surveillance systems which are as much as a million times more efficient than existing systems
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INL nuclear materials detection technology wins award
Idaho National Lab researchers develop long-range, nonintrusive nuclear materials detection technology; the researchers built a linear accelerator-based device that uses high-energy photons to induce fission and identify delayed neutron and gamma rays consistent with illicit nuclear materials
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Lufthansa selects Smiths Detection for cargo security
Lufthansa will deploy Smiths Detection’s 500DT trace explosives detectors in all of its eighteen U.S. airport locations; the 500DT was recently placed on the TSA Qualified Products List
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U.S. gets a C grade in WMD report
A blue ribbon panel of former high security official says terrorism threat remains real, and that the U.S. government’s efforts to counter WMD threats leave much to be desired
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The long view
Keeping the Lights on with Nuclear Waste: Radiochemistry Transforms Nuclear Waste into Strategic Materials
How UNLV radiochemistry is pioneering the future of energy in the Southwest by salvaging strategic materials from nuclear dumps –and making it safe.
Model Predicts Long-Term Effects of Nuclear Waste on Underground Disposal Systems
The simulations matched results from an underground lab experiment in Switzerland, suggesting modeling could be used to validate the safety of nuclear disposal sites.