Continuting Evaluation of Isotope Identifiers

In support of the Department of Energy Radiological Triage and the Department of Homeland Security Secondary Reachback programs, we, the authors, have continued efforts to characterize and evaluate commercial hand-held isotope identification instruments. We have expanded the previously reported 5-category system for evaluating an instrument’s answer to 12 categories for situations in which additional granularity is needed. We have also developed a list of essential characteristics for instruments that perform isotope identification in order to facilitate rapid and accurate data interpretation and threat assessment. This presentation reports on these developments and discusses some detector evaluation results.