Cargotec Port Security has installed its first spreader-mounted radiation detection system at a US container terminal, the facility located at Port Charleston, South Carolina. The Cargotec Port Security equipment at Port Charleston is being used by global security leader Lockheed Martin to complete integration testing of Lockheed Martin’s Container Scanning System. With a staff of 140,000 people, Lockheed Martin is one of the world’s leading security organizations, and the largest provider of IT services, system integration, and training to the United States government. Port Charleston, on the southeast United States coast, is one of the largest container ports in the United States.

The CPS equipment purchased by Lockheed Martin utilizes the Bromma STS45 separating twin-lift 20’-45’ telescoping spreader. It is outfitted with radiation threat identification technology designed to ensure secure port operations. Cargotec Port Security utilizes a technology platform that can be installed on crane spreaders, straddle carriers, shuttle carriers, or other mobile equipment, such as on marine vessels engaged in security operations. This technology can detect and analyze, through proprietary software, a particular radiation source and then identify and distinguish isotopes from naturally occurring radiological material. The spreader-mounted system purchased by Lockheed Martin scans containers while the spreader is in transit during the normal course of ship-to-shore operations.

“In today’s challenging economic environment, it is essential that security solutions not interfere with the normal velocity of port commerce,” says Troy Thompson, President of Cargotec Port Security. “Port Charleston is a strategically important, high-throughput USA terminal, and so we are pleased that our first spreader-mounted radiation detection system is being placed into service there. Terminals need solutions that ensure safe ports, but without compromising port productivity, and Port Charleston offers an ideal environment for CPS equipment, which does not add ‘an extra security step’ in trans-shipment and intermodal operations, but which performs container scanning in the normal course of spreader operations.”

Spreader-mounted gamma and neutron sensitivity scanning during container movement in the normal ship-to-shore load/unload process is designed to meet the US requirement for 100% inbound container scanning by 2012. Cargotec Port Security equipment has undergone field evaluations by the US Customs and Border Protection Service, the US Department of Energy Megaport program, and scientists from Pacific Northwest Labs at Port Tacoma and Port Charleston, which resulted in the detection and identification of radiological materials at all points tested across the container. Cargotec Port Security technology has also been successfully evaluated by scientists at the US Department of Energy Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the United States Department of Energy Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The Cargotec Port Security system placed into service at Port Charleston has already been awarded Qualified Anti-Terrorism Technology (QATT) Designation from the US Department of Homeland Security.