NSD researchers were honored recently with a coveted R&D100 Award. The winning technology was the Portable Radiation Imaging, Spectroscopic and Mapping (PRISM) system, a radiation detection device for search, location, identification, and characterization of radioactive materials.  Awardees include Paul Barton, Donald Gunter, Daniel Hellfeld, Lucian Mihailescu, Alex Moran, Victor Negut, Marcos Turqueti, and Kai Vetter of Berkeley Lab’s Nuclear Science and Engineering Divisions, as well as Hank Zhu of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which funded the project.

NSDs Erika Suzuki tied for first place in a September DOE competition intended to promote the commercial viability of a range of technologies developed at national laboratories. Suzuki split the $25,000 prize for her pitch on a 3-d radiation mapping system, the “Location and Mapping System” (LAMP), a portable mapper which can locate radioactive materials. LAMPS systems can be hand carried or mounted on drones; they use directionally sensitive detectors and the change in measured intensity as the systems move to map the radioactivity in their surroundings.

 

Nine NSDers — Jeff Bramble, Nick Brickner, Michael Johnson, Tom Gallant, Brien Ninemire, Larry Phair, Alan Poon, Devin Thatcher, and Scott Small were among the awardees of a 2019 Director’s Award for Exceptional Safety Achievement, “in recognition of the Public Safety Power Shut-down team’s successful response to the power shut down events of October 2019, including significant advance emergency planning by a cross functional team from operations, business and science organizations.”