May 18, 2017
I’ve been interested in science ever since I was a child. If you had told 8-year-old me that I was going to be a physicist, then I would have been very excited. Had you told me that my lab would be filled with a bevy of bombs, and that my typical work day might involve blasting those bombs with X-rays, then I would have been thrilled! And the best part is it’s all for a good cause: To help put better equipment in the hands of the nation’s bomb squads so they can keep the public safe.
The goal of public safety bomb squads is to locate explosive devices and render them safe before they can do harm. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), bomb squads responded to more than 630 explosion-related incidents in 2015 alone.
While NIST’s local bomb squad is part of the Montgomery County Fire Department, most bomb squads are part of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. Not every bomb technician is full time, either. Officers in smaller agencies often take on bomb squad duty in addition to their normal law enforcement responsibilities.
When a bomb technician is called out to deal with a suspicious package or a suspected bomb, their first step is often to take an X-ray image of the package to determine whether the package is a threat. The X-ray systems they use must be small, battery powered, and highly portable since explosive devices can be hidden almost anywhere.
Read more…
Source: NIST (blogs).