The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has awarded 13 organizations and companies 21 separate contracts worth $44.1 million related to the development of advanced radiation detection technologies.
The goal of the program is to advance the state of the art in systems capable of detecting, locating, imaging and identifying radiological and nuclear materials in a variety of operational scenarios.
The awards, made under the Broad Agency Announcement HDTRA1-12-NTD-BAA, focused on two topic areas: passive detection, location, identification, and characterization of nuclear material; and identification and exploitation of non-radiation signatures of shielded nuclear material (SNM).
The companies, organizations, award amounts and project titles follow:
· AOSense, Inc., $3.2 million, Atom Gravity Gradiometer for SNM Detection;
· Asynchrony Solutions, Inc., $5.2 million, Non-Rad SNM Operational Solutions using MFK-CBRN;
· Oak Ridge National Laboratory, $714,000, Passive Detection, Location, Identification, and Characterization of Nuclear Material;
· General Electric [GE] Global Research, $3 million, CZT Radio Isotope Identification Device;
· H3D, Inc., $2.3 million, Handheld CdZnTe Gamma Ray Imaging Spectrometers;
· Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, $599,532, Radiological Search Mission Design Tool;
· Johns Hopkins APL, $411,591, Neutron Time-Correlation Test and Measurement Campaign;
· Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), $1.1 million, Real-Time Characterization of SNM;
· LLNL, $1.4 million, Boron-loaded Plastic Scintillators with Efficient Pulse Shape Discrimination;
· LLNL, $990,000, Autonomous Nuclear Threat Detection Multi-Sensor Analysis;
· Northrop Grumman [NOC], Xetron business unit, $4.5 million, Passive Detection, Location, Identification, and Characterization of Nuclear Material;
· Northrop Grumman, $4.3 million, $4.3 million, Gamma Ray Imager and Locator;
· Northrop Grumman, $5.1 million, High-Resolution Focal Plane for Passive Gamma Ray Imaging;
· Nucsafe, Inc., $649,654, High-Performance, Low Cost Neutron Detectors Based on 6Li Class Microspheres;
· Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), $750,000, Low Profile Wearable Sensor with Leave-Behind Capability;
· PNNL, $850,000, Improved SNM Detection in Low Count Searches;
· PNNL, $2.5 million, Proxy Signature Development and Validation for Nuclear Loss of Custody;
· RadMet, LLC, $950,207, A Low-Power, Low-Cost Gamma Ray Spectrometer for Long-Dwell Measurement Applications;
· Science Applications International Corp. [SAI], $1.6 million, SensorWeb Enablement of RN Search Operations;
· SAIC, $2.9 million, Nuclear Threat Detection Building Interior Surveillance System;
· Univ. of Michigan, $1.1 million, Low-Cost, Large-Area, Fine Radiation Detection via Nanosemiconductors.