Researchers have demonstrated that they can remotely detect radioactive material from 10 m away using short-pulse CO2 lasers – a distance over ten times farther than achieved via previous methods.
Conventional radiation detectors, such as Geiger counters, detect particles that are emitted by the radioactive material, typically limiting their operational range to the material’s direct vicinity. The new method, developed by a research team headed up at the University of Maryland, instead leverages the ionization in the surrounding air, enabling detection from much greater distances.
The study may one day lead to remote sensing technologies that could be used in nuclear disaster response and nuclear security.
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