As thousands of fans streamed toward Levi's Stadium for the Super Bowl between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots, vendors hawked memorabilia, the scent of garlic fries filled the air and security officers checked clear bags beneath white tents.
Somewhere in that crowd, walking the same sidewalks and concourses, were a handful of team members carrying gear designed to go unnoticed: plain backpacks, smartphones and monitored devices in unmarked containers positioned nearby along with laptops open, miles away behind closed doors.
Team members from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL) Radiological Assistance Program (RAP) in support of the Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST) deployed to Santa Clara, California long before the coin flipped to heads. They were on the ground with specialized radiological monitoring equipment to ensure public safety at the biggest sporting event in the country.
NEST, managed by the National Nuclear Security Administration for the U.S. Department of Energy, is responsible for handling the nation's most pressing radiological and nuclear challenges. The Preventive Radiological and Nuclear Detection work at events like the Super Bowl is one aspect of the multi-mission nuclear emergency response capability that encompasses a network of scientists, engineers and emergency responders across several national laboratories.
Within that partnership, the RAP team, hosted by LLNL, handles detection and assessment for the western region, bringing Laboratory expertise into the field. Their work for the big game weekend began months prior in planning meetings with federal, state and local officials to safeguard not only the event itself, but the entire area from San Francisco to San José that would soon be flooded with out-of-state visitors and residents alike.
To accomplish this critical mission, the Livermore team built layers of detection, from low-altitude helicopter flights mapping a grid from the sky to vehicles monitoring traffic placed at checkpoints.
Data from the field directly streams to the NEST Technical Operations Center where nuclear experts watched for anomalies. The same sensitive instruments that could detect a hidden threat can also detect radiation from ordinary causes.
"We're here to search for threats so the equipment we deploy is incredibly sensitive," said LLNL RAP team member Jason Schnackenberg. "We're able to pick up some of the X-ray detectors as well as patients who have recently received radiation treatments. We can see these from hundreds of feet away sometimes."
The team compares what the detector is seeing with those known patterns. A radiological signature from a person who recently received a radiation therapy, for example, is distinguishable from the signature of material that could be used in a weapon.
If an alarm shows potential for malicious intent, NEST coordinates with federal and local law enforcement partners to step in to conduct further investigation and intervention. This vast security partnership, combined with multiple layers of detection and protection, helps ensure that any radiological threat is identified and addressed long before it enters the stadium.
Interested in learning more about LLNL's RAP team? Check out the Inside the Lab episode on the Radiological Assistance Program.
