Canberra Albuquerque, a subsidiary of Canberra Industries, manufactures state-of-the-art electronic equipment. It is a small company with global ambitions and an innovative reach overseas for the best R&D talent. It has tapped Russian scientific resources in a project that supports international nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The former Soviet Union is abundant in scientific talent and commercial potential. It is also a possible source of WMD proliferation. In Russia alone, the largest stockpiles in the world of nuclear weapons and materials sit largely unsecured. Perhaps worse, many former Soviet weapons personnel remain underemployed or unemployed and thus may be susceptible to the lure of rogue states or terrorist groups willing to pay handsomely for WMD expertise.
Fortunately, U.S. and multilateral programs have helped secure potentially vulnerable WMD sites and stockpiles. But the human resources side of nonproliferation remains. And that is where the Global Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention (GIPP) program makes a difference.
GIPP is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. Through a matching-funds approach, and with the coordination of the United States Industry Coalition, a nonprofit dedicated to nonproliferation and technology commercialization, GIPP helps foster high-tech projects that put WMD know-how to work in nonmilitary endeavors. These projects ensue from partnerships involving a U.S. company, a U.S. national laboratory, and a foreign institute or spin-off employing former WMD personnel.
Through GIPP, Canberra Albuquerque has collaborated with the General Physics Institute (GPI), in Moscow, Russia, and Brookhaven National Laboratory, in Upton, New York.
Canberra Albuquerque has fewer than 70 employees, but its work with its Russian partner has produced large-scale results. Initially, the affiliation with GPI led to major advancements in the New Mexico company’s surveillance and security seal technologies that would have otherwise been impossible.
“Our counterparts at GPI have been invaluable as a cost-effective R&D resource,” says Scott Kraus, international programs manager at Canberra Albuquerque. “Without GPI’s help developing diode laser spectrometers, we wouldn’t have the product line we have today.”
Canberra Albuquerque and its partners have been working on detection technologies. For instance, they have investigated a method of detecting trace chemicals using diode lasers — a technology for a non-intrusive remotely operated breath alcohol detector. The U.S.-Russian team designed a prototype with a tunable diode laser to detect ethanol vapor concentration, for potential law enforcement use to detect alcohol vapor on the breath of a driver at a distance of no less than 10 meters. Work on the prototype continues.
However, the initial potential of this detection technology encouraged the partners to investigate other applications. In a joint venture, Canberra Albuquerque and GPI are adapting the diode laser technology for detection of methamphetamine labs as well as explosives. The partners envision the development of products for customers in law enforcement and homeland security fields.
Other technologies are in the works, such as Multi-Object Remote Surveillance, or MORS. This is a cutting-edge “smart video” system for the automatic detection, identification, and tracking of objects under surveillance. The MORS system has a superior capacity for distinguishing between lighting fluctuations and actual movements of discrete objects in a field of view. That translates into a significant reduction in “false alarm” rates during surveillance.
The MORS system incorporates breakthroughs in 3D processing, which offers tremendous advantages over traditional planar surveillance with single cameras. Additionally, the “smart video” technology in MORS holds as-yet-to-be-imagined possibilities for GIPP partners Canberra Albuquerque, GPI, and Brookhaven.
While technology commercialization is a long-term process, the work done by GPI on detection technologies has already generated thousands of dollars in contract revenue for the institute as well as support of several jobs in Moscow. On a global scale, that may not sound like a lot. But now a handful of scientists with world-class skills are employed in nonmilitary pursuits, and the risk of nuclear terrorism may well have been reduced. As a small company in New Mexico can attest, nonproliferation and global peace start with little but bold steps.
Canberra Albuquerque: www.canberra.com