EE's gamma-ray spectrometer answers the national need for a portable, rugged, self-contained radioisotope analyzer

Growing national interest in public safety has produced a sudden need for a type of radiation-monitoring equipment that doesn't exist anywhere commercially. An easily portable, very rugged, and completely self-contained instrument is required that can be set up quickly and virtually anywhere to detect and identify radioactive isotopes. The Electronics Engineering Department has responded to this need by designing and developing the first equipment that can fulfill all these requirements. This instrument, a 1024-channel gamma-ray spectrometer, has already gone into limited production to provide health physicists at LLL and other Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) laboratories with an effective tool for monitoring possible sources of radioactivity