SAIC Wins Bid for Bomb Detector in Eurotunnel

Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego has won a multimillion-dollar contract to develop and install a bomb-detection system to screen freight trains that will travel through the Eurotunnel now under construction between England and France.

The contract, which could grow to $60 million, calls for development of a system that is “large enough to drive a truck through,” said SAIC spokesman Chuck Nichols. “It will be capable of examining extremely large objects.”

The Eurotunnel, a joint venture between the British and French governments, will link Europe with England with a pair of one-way railroad tunnels when completed in 1993. Freight will be loaded onto trains for the journey through the tunnel.

Nichols said that SAIC’s Euroscan Security System will use a technology that is similar to the company’s proprietary thermal neutron analysis, or TNA, technology. SAIC developed TNA for use in the screening of baggage at airports. TNA uses an extremely low-level source of radiation to detect explosive devices.

Nichols said the Euroscan technology “is not being used in any other industrial application at this time . . . but the technology is also being developed for other applications.”

The Euroscan Security System must undergo “certain tests” before being installed at Eurotunnel terminals at Coquelles, France, and Folkestone, England. SAIC has teamed with Schlumberger Industries, a high-technology services and products company with revenues of more than $4 billion.

The explosives detection system is being developed by an SAIC team in Santa Clara. That team also developed SAIC’s proprietary TNA technology.