Table Of Content

Environment and Resource Management THE INSIDE VIEW Technology developed for the Apollo lunar landing are more than one million drums of waste dating back to program has come full circle—launched to the moon and the beginning of the atomic era. Located in interim then finding a home back here on Earth—advancing the storage, these drums are subject to corrosion and potential art of computer imaging inspection. leakage. They cannot be transported across state lines or Computed tomography, widely known as CT or permanently disposed of until they have been examined CATScan, is a medical diagnostic technique for compre- (characterized) to prove that they neither contain more hensive body scanning. It incorporates digital image than one-half percent free liquid, nor that the drum wall processing technology that traces its origin to NASA has lost integrity. research and development performed as a prelude to the Identifying these conditions is ideal for computed Apollo program. Millions of people around the world tomography. According to Bernardi, preliminary tests on benefit each year from the medical applications of this cold surrogate drums at MSFC were so successful, DOE technology. has since invested in a $6 This same capability has found secondary utility as million BIR program to an aerospace, and general industrial tool—the Advanced develop and field test a Computed Tomography Inspection System, or ACTIS. In transportable (mobile its medical role, CT scans the human body for tumors or semi-trailer), two-million other irregularities. The ACTIS system, on the other volt x-ray CT scanner. hand, finds defects in structures and components, be they That hardware uses many castings, assemblies, rocket engines, or nozzles. The of the design principles system helped NASA’s Space Shuttle engineers character- and elements similar to the ize structural assemblies by producing high-quality CT BIR ACTIS CT scanner images. These images demonstrated the ablative properties currently at NASA’s of various solid rocket motor nozzle assembly materials, Marshall Space Flight revealing anomalies at bondline interfaces. Flaws such as Center. The mobile drum these could cascade into mission failures if not detected. inspection unit uses a For Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), Bio- combination of x-ray and Imaging Research, Inc. (BIR), Lincolnshire, Illinois, gamma-ray technology to developed an industrial inspection system that employs “fingerprint” the source of CT technology for nondestructive evaluation. The system, radioactivity. Characteriza- designed and built by BIR under contract to NASA, was tion is essential to decision installed in 1988. Two years later, Boeing Aerospace in making on how to treat or Seattle, Washington purchased an ACTIS system for transport the waste. nondestructive CT inspection of a variety of commercial Testing of this new technology application Industrial inspection system, built by Bio- and military aerospace components. that fingerprints nuclear waste drums is also Imaging Research, is ideal “ACTIS has upheld NASA’s reputation for technol- underway at several DOE sites. Labeled the Waste for nondestructive testing ogy that benefits industry and science,” advises Richard Inspection Tomography (WIT) system, the of aerospace structures Bernardi, BIR’s Vice President for Business Development. equipment promises to revolutionize the nuclear and components. The technology is rooted in It was used to view the interior of a sealed centennial waste drum characterization process. NASA’s Apollo moon “time capsule”—an accomplishment that was featured in landing project. several national publications such as National Geographic. Cross-sectional CT images offer more detail than radiographic images. The equipment’s high-speed scanning feature offers the capability for 100 percent inspection in a production environment. Looking back in time, ACTIS was used to examine the skull and caudal vertebrae of a Tyrannosaurus Rex while the fossils were still imbedded inside their rock matrix. The images helped paleontologists determine the best way to recover the valuable fossils undamaged. Computed tomography, widely used in the medical field, has proven invaluable More recently, yet another successful ACTIS spinoff to locate imperfections in aerospace took place. The NASA MSFC ACTIS system proved the components. This Advanced Computed feasibility of CT inspection of 55 gallon drums of Tomography Inspection System can scan radioactive waste for the U.S. Department of Energy anything from small turbine blades, auto parts, and drums of nuclear waste to (DOE), based on tests with surrogate (cold) drums. There rocket assemblies. Commercial Benefits—Spinoffs 77