ISU, Scan Tech Team Up For National Security

Homeland security, healthy food and safe medicine: All are huge concerns for America, and now, Idaho State University will be a national hub for making sure all of those things happen. On Tuesday, ISU announced that radiation technology company Scan Tech will join its research park in the old Ballard building.

Scan Tech is going to be giving ISU scanning technology that will be able to see exactly what kind of items are inside large shipping containers. That accelerator they are donating will only be the third one in use in the world.

Assistant Professor Eric Burgett, a major contributor to the research park, said it is like buying someone a hammer. “With a hammer I can do a lot of fun stuff. So this happens to be a very big hammer and it’s a very versatile hammer,” Burgett said.

Scan Tech Vice President Chip Starns demonstrated how the technology will work. A radiation accelerator will be placed inside a 40? cargo container. It will shoot a radiation beam through a slit, through a lead wall and out to what will be a track. That beam will be able to scan a container of the same size in just 60 seconds. So that cargo will move pretty quickly.

They will be able to bring in something that needs to be scanned, like medical equipment, through one door, scan it and send it back out the other door and back to its destination at 20 miles per hour, Burgett said.

The scan does more than an x-ray. It can tell whether round packages contain cocaine or cantaloupes. And if those cantaloupes happen to have Listeria in them, the scan can see that, too. It can also see things terrorists might put into a cargo container, creating implications for Homeland Security.

?It gives us the ability to image not only cargo containers but we’ll be able to take the same accelerator and use it for nuclear energy research,” Burgett said.

Scan Tech President and CEO Dolan Falconer said he is excited to provide new opportunities for ISU students, but he is not underestimating the profit factor. He wants to build relationships with local businesses.

?That will grow into commercial, long-term strategic partnerships for manufacturers to actually help us in manufacturing and assembling for deployment of our product around the world for sale and income,” Falconer said.

That could mean jobs even for those who aren?t Ph.D.s. Scan Tech is already working with Premiere Technologies in Blackfoot.

Scan Tech and ISU do not have a time line for when things will get started yet. They have to meet a series of safety verifications and tests. They are already moving equipment into the building, so it is just a matter of time before the scanning gets underway.

The products tested at ISU will go to border crossings and ports of entry at the coastlines and in land-locked areas, too, Falconer said.