Rapid restoration of operations is critical to minimize the social and economic impacts of a chemical or biological attack. Working with other laboratories and industry partners, Sandia is developing technologies and systems to rapidly and effectively assess and decontaminate impacted facilities.
For example, we are developing a process for the rapid assessment of a contaminated site. Currently, several days are needed to assess whether a facility contaminated by a bioweapon is safe. Sandia’s technologies—based on our microfluidics expertise—could cut the time needed to assess spore viability to less than 30 minutes. By greatly speeding the assessment process, this technology will allow facility operators to resume normal operation much more quickly than before.
