Customs and Border Protection has invited VeriTainer to participate in an operational readiness test at the Rail and Radiation Test Center at the Port of Tacoma, Wash., using the company’s VeriSpreader crane-mounted nuclear detection technology.
VeriTainer is currently installing the VeriSpreader in Tacoma and making sure it’s ready to go through the testing program, Joe Alioto, vice president of sales at VeriTainer, tells TR2. He says the upcoming test program with CBP is a result of the agency’s awareness of recently concluded tests of VeriSpreader at the Port of Oakland, Calif..
The Oakland Pilot Project, which involved the use of the VeriSpreader in two separate phases, demonstrated the ruggedness of the system as well as its sensitivity, Alioto says.
“We’re putting the sensitivity concerns to rest just as we put the ruggedization concerns to rest,” he says.
During the second Oakland test phase, which ran from April 2007 through May 2008, the VeriSpreader completed over 45,000 container lifts without incident.
In the second round of testing the VeriSpreader featured an array of 22 gamma radiation detectors and 16 neutron detectors.
The VeriSpreader, which is directly over a container as it’s either being lifted from a ship or from a truck onto a ship, has also gone through two rounds of surrogate source testing, surpassing American National Standards Institute standards in both, VeriTainer says. The system has also demonstrated secure data transmission, with information taken from the spreader bar, collected, stored and delivered securely in real time to various interested parties.
Alioto says this performance by the VeriSpreader led CBP to issue a Request for Information that was basically aimed at taking a close look at the system. It’s possible that after the testing in Tacoma the VeriSpreader may go through a round of testing elsewhere involving actual special nuclear materials, he says.
For the testing in Tacoma the VeriSpreader had to meet certain state-mandated specifications, which it did, Alioto says.
As for international interest in the VeriSpreader, Alioto says he finds that there is a widespread interest in improving security as well as concern about meeting U.S. legal mandates.