The New Technology Behind Airport Security

September 11 had a profound effect on our lives in many ways one of the legacies of those horrific events is of course airport security we're now subjected to more scans and checks than ever before but what about air cargo 80% of air freight travels on passenger planes with us does it get subjected to the same level of security the scanning of air cargo is a pressing problem that's been around for a very long time a lot of seat cargo does get scanned around the world in terms of their cargo not a lot since 9/11 scientists at CSIRO have been developing an air freight scanner to address this security gap so this is the first system you put together yep now this is the first scanner that we built what's special about the scanner is that it combines neutrons and x-rays together to give you a much clearer picture of the what's inside the cargo containers so traditional ones only use x-rays is there yes normal systems will be based around x-ray alone okay so how do you generate the neutrons where does that happen they're made using a system called a neutron generator that's actually buried deep inside this concrete block which just shields the radiation from getting out this uses a fusion reaction it's very similar to the reaction that goes on in the heart of the Sun so x-rays out of one neutrons out of the other yep that's correct so the the skinnier slots where the x-rays come out then why the slot there is the neutrons so it's just sort of shooting out beams of these yeah so we get one line as it won't want one row in an image and then as we move the cargo through the beam row by row we build up a picture of what's inside the container the neutrons are sensed by a bank of detectors within the scanner these are components of the detector yep that's correct so we start off with a piece of this this is the scintillator material so we fire a neutron in here the neutron gets turned into a little flash of light that we can then pick up with our electronics here we have a bank of 16 and then we have the electronics that converts the light into an electrical pulse we have a digital chip to count those pulses and then that connects through to a computer it's quite similar to a digital camera we have these scintillators making the light we have a whole array of pixels and that's what we used to build up the image so if we just had x-rays that's what the image would look like yeah it shows the shapes of the objects in the cargo quite clearly but you have no idea what what they're actually made from but if we bring in the neutron information then we get a full color image yeah now the way it works is the neutrons and the x-rays together let's just pick out different classes of material different types of material in the cargo and then we use different colors to show those materials to the operator with the neutrons the scanner can distinguish up to 250 different types of substances so for example we've got some computer equipment here on the Left showing up sort of green from the glass in the old-fashioned computer monitor there we've got metal parts steel parts showing up in blue and then we've got some food stuff showing in red and we've got paper and files showing up in orange so you could pick the difference between say a bag of explosives in a bag of flour yeah no they're chopped quite clearly has been different colors ironically it's using nuclear technology to make the world a safer place you try to bring a new dimension into the the image that we form we're able to better identify objects that are not meant to be in a car go various contraband items to the scanners are in operation at Abu Dhabi and Belgrade airports and the team is about to roll out their latest version the mark 3 it's made in China by a partner new tech the technology really is fundamentally the same the things that have changed are in the shielding we were using recycled rubber rather than concrete we're using smaller Neutron generators and we're now using whole system that we put in place a lot quicker and is easier to maintain so we now have a device that will help close the gap in air security and so if it comes to an airport a you and me you

Channel: Journeyman Pictures

Views: 64,615

Keywords: journeyman pictures, news, current affairs, world news, documentary, cargo scanner, technology, terrorism, 9/11, air security, inventors, airport security, airports, explosives, bombs, airport staff, dsa

Id: RG3MEIelP5k

Length: 4min 25sec (265 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 05 2016