SPECIAL REPORT | TAMPER DETECTION
Above left: A conventional CAPS seal Source: IAEA
Above right: The newly adopted Field Verifiable Passive Seal (FVPS) Source: IAEA
However, Cody identifies one potential benefit of the
colour change system: “Because the inspectors will come in every few months to a few years depending on the material and the agreement with the country, the timing is not critical. It just has to happen before the inspectors get there. It’s not real time. That said, if there were surveillance cameras in the room with a view of containers and these seals, you could probably see on that camera that one of those seals had been compromised and turned black, and then maybe send an inspector much sooner. That’s very different. You can’t do that with any of the other seals unless they’re the electronic versions.”
Commercialising security Cost focus has also been key for the research team since the earliest conceptual stages, as Smartt says: “Because we’re in a research and development cycle we are not at a place where we are commercialising. That said, the materials themselves are inexpensive and one of the reasons we chose the water beads was for ease of processing. It made it a lot easier, but there will be labour costs and if someone were to pick this up commercially, we would hope that there would be some sort of efficient process to manufacture these.” Corbin picks up on this theme, saying: “A lot of stuff in
materials R&D these days is synthesised. It takes effort to make something like that to change one molecule to another. For example, that takes solvents and lots of other chemistry and time. In this case, every single component is something that is commercial. The sealing materials are thermosets or epoxies, the water beads are cheap, the materials are 3D printed, the little seals are 3D printed. The enclosures are made of acrylic tubes with different diameters. It’s all commercial and they don’t take long to build once we have everything.” Because the L-DOPA reacts with oxygen, the final assembly must take place in an anaerobic environment and here Corbin suggests a commercial approach will address potential costs too. “The key component and where the cost may go up again, theoretically, is the requirement of an inert atmosphere to build it but I believe there are automated systems that can operate in an atmosphere where this could be processed. It could be streamlined, but this is not something we have investigated because we’re not anywhere near that point,” he says.
Nonetheless, while low cost, commercially available
components was an important consideration, the sealing technology also placed further demands on the system
30 | May 2024 |
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chemistry. Corbin explains: “This process came from cheaper materials that have inherently unique features. Water beads can absorb a lot of material, and then it was a case of finding something that can change colour visibly and using the beads as a ‘holder’ of the sensor. There were additional requirements around that application. Once that colour change has happened, you have to be positive that it can’t be reversed. It’s a one-way street so if you put it in an anaerobic environment, for example, it doesn’t change back. The chemistry is irreversible.”
Moving beyond nuclear Having developed a prototype the next steps are to conduct further testing and finalise the reporting. “After that, we will continue to talk to interested parties that could be in other treaty verification regimes, for regional inspectorates, or for other industry types. I think there could be value in many different industry fields. The IAEA requirements were pretty stringent and so when we come up with something that meets most of those requirements, other industries could benefit from that work,” says Corbin. Indeed, the nuclear sector is relatively niche, as Smartt observes: “The IAEA uses about 18,000 seals per year, that’s still a small number. If someone were to pick this up commercially, I don’t think we are looking at rolling out really high volumes for this particular market. We do think there’s a space for asset monitoring, to protect something high value. We think there could be other application spaces for these enclosures and they are probably close to ready to be commercialised if that came up.”
It is clear that the colour changing security device does
have a number of advantages over other approaches that may suit markets beyond nuclear. These advantages centre on cost and functionality, as Corbin concludes: “Even though the metal cup seal is the lowest cost in terms of materials and pretty high cost in terms of verification, some of the other seals the IAEA uses, like the Cobra Seal, are about a hundred dollars per seal and that goes all the way up to electronic seals, which can be a few thousand dollars. These things really vary in price,” he says. “How functional it is for that cost is a big deal as well,
the security aspect, the tamper indication and the unique identifying colours mean the overall design has a layered security protection. There’s a lot of thought going into what materials were used and how they were done to deliver value with function, which is the best-case scenario for lifecycle cost.” ■
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