Development and Deployment of Physical Protection Systems for Mobile Radiological Sources
Used in the Well Logging and Industrial Radiography Industries

The threat of dirty bombs or radiological dispersal devices (RDDs) is real, and the U.S. Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration’s (DOE/NNSA) Office of Global Material Security (GMS) has spent over a decade understanding the threat and working to protect vulnerable high‐activity radiological materials across the globe that are used in everyday medical, research, and industrial applications. Radioactive sources are used in radiography to inspect welds or metal integrity, and in the oil and gas industry to characterize exploration and production wells to provide critical data to exploit geological formations in pursuit of oil caches. These mobile radioactive sources are of sufficient curie quantities to be categorized as desirable sources for terrorist organizations. Over the last ten years the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has been leading an effort for GMS to work with industry partners and mobile radiological device manufacturers to develop technology that can be integrated into the daily operations of these industries and provide an enhanced level of security both domestically and internationally. The fundamental security challenge of mobile radiological devices is the control and accountability of the source when it is in transit or in use in the field. Maintaining control and accountability of the location of the source and confirming that the source is in fact still in the proper container is critical when addressing this specific security concern. Working with industry, PNNL developed a Mobile Source Transit Security (MSTS) system that monitors, records, and reports the status of mobile radioactive sources using sensor based, active technology to track the source shields/cameras, calibration sources and verifiers. The MSTS system is designed to be integrated into the industries’ standard equipment and vehicles and contains an internal radiation detector that can detect the presence of the individual source. Alarms are sent to the base of operations center to immediately notify key personnel in case the source is lost or illicitly removed. This paper will discuss the progress to-date on the design, development, and deployment of the MSTS system, and outreach to the international community. More specifically, lessons learned from early field deployments, technology transfer strategies, and initial international deployments will be discussed.