Personal Radiation Detector Field Test and Evaluation Campaign

Following the success of the Anole1 test of portable detection system, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Domestic Nuclear Detection Office organized a test and evaluation campaign for personal radiation detectors (PRDs), also known as “Pagers”. This test, “Bobcat”, was conducted from July 17 to August 8, 2006, at the Nevada Test Site. The Bobcat test was designed to evaluate the performance of PRDs under various operational scenarios, such as pedestrian surveying, mobile surveying, cargo container screening, and pedestrian chokepoint monitoring. Under these testing scenarios, many operational characteristics of the PRDs, such as gamma and neutron sensitivities, positive detection and false alarm rates, response delay times, minimum detectable activities, and source localization errors, were analyzed. This paper will present the design, execution, and methodologies used to test this equipment for the DHS.