Justification_for_the_replacement_of_8_ORTEC_X-Cooler_II_with_8_ORTEC_X-Cooler_III_2018.pdf

Justification for the replacement of 8 ORTEC X-Cooler II with 8 ORTEC X-Cooler III

In 2009, the United States Department of Energy Radiological and Environmental Sciences Laboratory (RESL) had the Advanced Measurement Technologies (AMETEC)/ORTEC company convert 14 liquid nitrogen cooled high purity germanium detectors to electronically cooled after they won a competitive bid for the conversion (DE-SOL-0000820). No other manufacture was able to meet the requirements of RESL for the electronically cooled conversion of its detectors.

In 2012, AMETEC acquired the company that produced the electronic coolers used to cool the high purity germanium detectors to liquid nitrogen temperatures. Starting in 2015, AMETEC could no longer guarantee maintenance support on the electronic coolers that were older than five years, which all of RESL’s X-Cooler II units are. In 2015, RESL decided to change the $80K annual maintenance contract with AMETEC to a $60K true up contract with a $20K option, in order to start replacement of the aging X-Cooler II’s with X-Cooler III’s as they started to fail.

The $20K true up option was not exercised in 2015 due to some confusion with the contract and by the start of the 2016 fiscal year RESL decided to suspend the entire $80K maintenance contract with AMETEC, as it was no longer cost effective, so that those funds could be used to purchase new X-Cooler III units on a rotating basis and/or as they failed.

During fiscal year 2017 eight X-Cooler II units have been failing and RESL would like to replace them with X-Cooler III’s so that the RESL Gamma Ray Spectrometry System can be fully operational. X-Cooler II units are no longer available.

A company called Canberra, a division of Miron Technologies, also produces electronically cooled high purity germanium detectors. However, the RESL’s ORTEC pop-top™ detector configuration would have to be remanufactured to be compatible with Canberra’s electronically cooled detector configuration. Canberra is only able to remanufacture high purity germanium detectors that they produce and are not able to reconfigure ORTEC pop-top™ detectors. This is due to how each of the companies deposit their electrical connections to the germanium crystals when they are being grown. The Canberra electronically cooled high purity germanium detectors are directly attached to their cooling system, at the factory, whereas the ORTEC detectors are connected via screwing on the detector, by the user, to the cooling system umbilical cord. To purchase electronically cooled systems from Canberra, new detectors would have to be purchased adding approximately $240,000 (8 detectors X $30,000 per detector) to the overall cost of the coolers. Due to this additional cost and that ORTEC is the only company that can provide these coolers due to the unique and proprietary nature of this equipment the X- Cooler III’s should be purchased from ORTEC.