The Mission
The maritime domain is wide, crowded, and hard to control. A port handles thousands of containers a day, a coastline runs for miles, and a single vessel can carry a hidden source past a fixed monitor before anyone reacts. Naval and maritime security teams have to cover all of it: screening arriving ships and cargo, sweeping hulls and holds during boarding operations, protecting crews from radiation hazards aboard their own vessels, and running wide-area searches when intelligence points to a threat moving by water.
Each of those jobs has a different rhythm. A boarding team moving fast across a deck needs something light on the back and hands-free. A patrol boat sweeping a harbor needs a fixed, always-on system that maps what it sees. A radiation safety officer aboard ship needs a quiet alarm in a pocket. The instruments have to identify what they find, not just chirp, because the difference between a medical isotope in a shipment and special nuclear material decides whether a vessel sails or gets held.
The Challenge
Salt water is the first problem. Spray, humidity, and the occasional full immersion will end an instrument that was never built for it, and a sealed enclosure is not optional at sea. Shock is the second: decks pitch, boats slam, and gear gets dropped onto steel. Beyond ruggedness, maritime search adds a geometry problem. Sources move, platforms move, and a single reading means little without a track. Teams need directionality to point toward a source and GPS so that every detection lands on a map a command center can read.
Then there is scale and coverage. A handheld is the right tool on a deck and the wrong tool for a freeway of container trucks or a stretch of open water. The maritime answer is a layered one: fixed and vehicle or marine mounted detection for wide-area coverage, portable systems for boarding and search, and personal detectors so every crew member is a sensor. Berkeley Nucleonics builds for each of those layers.
Recommended Berkeley Nucleonics Solutions
The line covers the maritime mission from the pier to the open sea. The models below map to the roles a naval or port security program has to fill.
Wide-area and platform-mounted search
The SAMmobile 150 (RD-150) is a plug-and-play mobile radiation detection system that ships in vehicle, marine, aerial, and crane variants, so the same architecture that watches a choke point on land can ride a patrol boat or a crane over a container yard. It runs large NaI detectors (2x4x16 and 4x4x16 inch modules, up to three per system), detects gamma and neutron, and produces color-contour radiological maps with coordinate-tagged reports. An internal lithium-ion battery gives more than 24 hours of runtime, and the system is RadResponder enabled for reachback. For a harbor patrol or a cargo terminal, this is the wide-area workhorse.
Boarding teams and rapid search
The SAMpack 120 (RD-120) is a human-portable backpack that detects and identifies gamma and neutron radiation while leaving both hands free. It is IP65 rated, dust proof, water spray resistant, rated to a 1 meter drop, and built to be fully decontaminated, which matters when a pack comes off a working deck. The optional RadCompass directionality feature points the operator toward a source, and automatic reachback streams GPS location, radiation level, and spectrum to a command center. For a boarding party crossing to an unknown vessel, it is the quiet, capable search tool.
Identification in the hand
The SAM 950 is the ruggedized handheld RIID, designed to meet ANSI N42.34 requirements and built to be water and shock resistant. It supports NaI, LaBr3, and CeBr3 detectors across 1.5x1.5, 2x2, and 3x3 inch sizes, with optional neutron detection, automatic K-40 stabilization, and one-click reachback over WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and USB. When a boarding team or a port inspector needs a definitive isotope call in hand, on a wet deck, the SAM 950 is the instrument that earns its place.
Personal protection for the crew
Every crew member can carry a detector. The Model 951 nukeALERT is a watertight, pager-sized personal radiation detector that responds to gamma in under a second, runs more than two years on two AA cells, and signals with audio, vibration, a color-changing LED, and a 1 to 9 intensity readout. It needs no training and passes a 3 foot drop test on concrete. The PM1703GNA-II MBT adds neutron sensitivity in a shockproof, hermetic case with two-button operation and stored spectroscopic data for later analysis. Issued to deck crews and inspectors, these turn every person aboard into part of the screen.
Why It Works
The maritime case rewards a layered fit, and this line was built to layer. Wide-area coverage comes from the SAMmobile 150 on a boat or a crane. Search and boarding come from the SAMpack 120 and the SAM 950. Personal protection comes from the Model 951 and the PM1703GNA-II. The same RadResponder reachback path runs through the larger systems, so a detection on the water reaches the same command picture as a detection on the pier.
Ruggedness is not an afterthought here. The SAM 950 is water and shock resistant by design, the SAMpack 120 is IP65 and decontaminable, and the personal detectors are watertight and built for hard use. Directionality and GPS turn raw counts into a track and a map, which is what a maritime search actually needs. And because every system identifies the isotope rather than only alarming, a team can tell a medical or industrial source from a genuine threat before it makes an operational call.
Getting Started
Berkeley Nucleonics can help you build a layered maritime program, from a marine-variant SAMmobile 150 on a patrol platform to SAMpack 120 packs for boarding teams, SAM 950 identifiers for inspectors, and personal detectors for every crew member. Tell us your platforms, your screening points, and your reachback requirements, and we will match the configuration.
Call 800-234-7858 or email info@berkeleynucleonics.com. To compare detectors and review the full set of datasheets and guides, visit the Isotope ID & Radiation Detection documentation library.