Two years ago, Bob Goldstein stopped by the San Fernando Valley retail shop of drone distributor FlyCam UAV with an unusual request. Would it be possible to attach radiation detection devices made by his company, U.S. Nuclear Corp. in Canoga Park, to the unmanned aircraft that FlyCam sells? Jeff Barnett, co-founder and operations manager at FlyCam in Chatsworth, took his expertise in attaching cameras to drones and applied it to radiation and chemical detectors. And from that developed a partnership with U.S. Nuclear. “By attaching sensors, we are making (drones) into useful industrial and civil tools,” Goldstein said. Flying sensors can improve safety at facilities that use radioactive material, such as nuclear power plants, uranium mines, hospitals, universities and national laboratories, when their staffs respond to emergencies. U.S. Nuclear has three subsidiaries – Technical Associates in Canoga Park, which makes radiation detection equipment; Overhoff Technologies in Milford, Ohio, which specializes in tritium detection equipment; and Electronic Control Concepts, acquired last year and relocated to Milford from New York, which makes voltmeters to check industrial and medical x-ray machines. The publicly traded company had revenue of about $2.1 million last year and employs 17 workers, with seven of those in the West Valley location. Out of the growing markets that U.S. Nuclear serves – China is booming with nuclear power plant construction – it is the drones that are the most exciting for Goldstein. The company is believed by Goldstein and Barnett to be the only one putting radiation detection equipment on unmanned aircraft. A typical situation where the drone would help is measuring the radiation or chemicals coming out of a smokestack. Currently, the company might have a sensor at the stack’s base which estimates what’s coming out at the top. But a drone can sample the smoke plume directly. “A lot of these things you can do with handheld or laboratory devices, but if you want to know what’s coming out of the stack you have to put a detector up there,” Goldstein said. “And what better way to do it than with a drone?” The drone-borne sensors record alpha, beta and gamma rays. Real-time communication between the sensors and the operator on the ground occurs via software that superimposes the radiation pattern over a Google satellite view. Red indicates a heavy concentration while yellow, orange and green mean less radiation. “You can find a radioactive source or find a smuggler just by zipping around,” Goldstein said. “By flying random you can see where you have the hot colors and then can go back there and zoom in on it.” In a report released in March of last year, financial services firm Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimated that the global drone market would reach more than $100 billion over the next four years. Military spending would be the bulk of that but use by businesses and civil government was identified as the fastest-growing sector, with $13 billion in spending by 2020. Ken Krieger, radiation safety officer at Radiation Technology Inc., a testing firm in Georgetown, Texas, said the market for radiation detectors, especially small, efficient ones, is well established. The detector companies in the U.S. are looking for new niche detectors that improve on what has been done in the past, said Krieger, who serves on the Texas Radiation Advisory Board and is a member of the Health Physics Society, a professional organization for safety and standards in radiation use. “It is a constant industry that is kind of trying to figure out new and different ways to detect radiation,” Krieger said. Placing the detectors on drones was inevitable as all other kinds of equipment are now used with the aircraft. Drones improve safety by not having a person climb tall ladders to take measurements or having a person risk exposure in a high radiation area, Krieger said. “If you are trying to assess an emergency or an accident, send a drone in, take an assessment; then you know what the magnitude of your response needs to be or what kind of equipment you need,” he added. Cold War origins The roots of U.S. Nuclear date back 70 years to the founding of Technical Associates in 1946 by scientists working on the Manhattan Project who developed radiation detectors to protect the staff developing the first atomic bombs. Goldstein, a Valley native who graduated from North Hollywood High School, had connections to the company early on when his father worked there and later bought the company. Goldstein has worked at U.S. Nuclear since the early 1970s. The company went public on the over-the-counter market two years ago. FlyCam, on the other hand, was founded in late 2014 by Barnett and Jeri Donaldson, the chief executive. Donaldson had been doing payroll management in the corporate world while dabbling in photography on the side and Barnett was a camera operator working in film and television. Barnett was prescient enough to see the direction aerial cinematography was going and while operations manager for a Burbank camera rental house, he came upon a drone that he rebuilt. That led to the start of FlyCam. The company started with custom-made drones for the entertainment industry until it secured an exclusive North American distributorship for the eight-blade Neo drone, made by AceCore Technologies B.V., in the Netherlands. “We just got a purchase order from a government agency and they just put in a second order, so we know it’s working,” Donaldson said. The pair operated a retail store during 2015 that was closed a year later. But during the time it was open Goldstein stopped by with his request to put his sensors on a drone. With a saturation in the aerial cinematography market, FlyCam needed to find a different niche, Donaldson said. “We put all the focus on radiation detection and sensor packages,” she explained. “That has blossomed into the camera array packages that we do – searchlights, thermal cameras and the payload drop system.” The payload drop system is a device that carries three, four-pound payloads that can be dropped out in the field. “We just sold one to an environmental cleanup company to fly out lead lines to booms that they lay across the water to capture an oil slick,” Donaldson said. China’s nuclear plants For the U.S. Nuclear sensors, Barnett said he did a proof of concept test using a small drone. Wanting redundancy in the event of a motor malfunction, the sensors were then tested on a six-blade Cypher 6, made by FlyCam, and then moved up to the Neo, which can continue flying with two motors out. As far as Goldstein and Barnett know, there is no one else offering radiation sensors on commercial drones. A few other companies are working on such a setup, but they are at least 18 months behind the FlyCam-U.S. Nuclear parternship, Barnett said. “I don’t know of anybody else that does that right now,” added Krieger, the safety specialist. Even in its new niche, U.S. Nuclear has plenty of competition from other sensor manufacturers. Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., in Waltham, Mass., is one, and Mirion Technologies, a French company, is another selling radiation detection devices. While exploring the new market with drones, U.S. Nuclear is ramping up its presence in China. Early this year, the company opened an office in Beijing staffed with local sales reps that will improve communications between current and future customers, distributors and government officials. The company’s tritium detectors are particularly prized in China, where they can sell for three to four times the price in the U.S., Goldstein said. Tritium is the weakest radiation emitting material, which makes it difficult to detect and measure. For the future, China has ambitious plans to build up to 200 nuclear power plants in the next 15 years. The country currently has 20 reactors under construction, according to a database maintained by the International Atomic Energy Agency. By comparison, the U.S. has only four nuclear reactors in construction. “It is the biggest nuclear power market in the world by far,” Goldstein said. It is also a huge market when it comes to drone technology. The Goldman Sachs study put China in second place for drone spending between this year and 2021 at $4.5 billion after the $17.5 billion estimated spending in the U.S. The new nuclear reactors will require detection equipment and China currently gets about 90 percent of its sensors from overseas, Goldstein said. “It is a big opportunity for us,” he added.
Detectors Plus Drones Equal Nuclear Option
