The EURITRACK project: development of a tagged neutron inspection system for cargo containers

Bertrand Perot (1) , Gregory Perret (1) , Alain Mariani (1) , Jean-Luc Ma (1) , Jean-Louis Szabo (2) , Emmanuel Mercier (2) , Guillaume Sannié (2) , Giuseppe Viesti (3) , Giancarlo Nebbia (3) , Silvia Pesente (3) , Marcello Lunardon (3) , Paola Formisano (3) , Sandra Moretto (3) , Daniela Fabris (3) , Aldo Zenoni (4) , Germano Bonomi (4) , Antonietta Donzella (4) , Andrea Fontana (5) , Gaia Boghen (5) , Vladivoj Valkovic (6) , Davorin Sudac (6) , Marek Moszynski (7) , Tadeusz Batsch (7) , Michal Gierlik (7) , Dariusz Wolski (7) , Wlodzimierz Klamra (8) , Patrick Isaksson (8) , Philippe Le Tourneur (9) , Miguel Lhuissier (9) , Annamaria Colonna (10) , Carlo Tintori (10) , Paolo Peerani (11) , Vitor Sequeira (11) , Martino Salvato (11)

1 LMN - Laboratoire de Mesures Nucléaires
2 LCAE (CEA, LIST) - Laboratoire Capteurs et Architectures Electroniques (CEA, LIST)
3 INFN, Sezione di Padova - Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Padova
4 UniBs - Università degli Studi di Brescia = University of Brescia
5 UNIPV - Università degli Studi di Pavia = University of Pavia
6 Rudjer Boskovic Institute [Zagreb]
7 THE ANDRZEJ SOLTAN INSTITUTE FOR NUCLEAR STUDIES - The Andrzej Soltan Institute for Nuclear Studies
8 ALBANOVA - AlbaNova University Center
9 EADS-SODERN
10 CAEN S.p.A.
11 JRC - European Commission - Joint Research Centre [Ispra]

The EURopean Illicit TRAfficing Countermeasures Kit project is part of the 6th European Union Framework Program, and aims at developing a neutron inspection system for detecting threat materials (explosives, drugs, etc.) in cargo containers. Neutron interaction in the container produces specific gamma-rays used to determine the chemical composition of the inspected material. An associated particle sealed tube neutron generator is developed to allow precise location of the interaction point by direction and time-of-flight measurements of the neutrons tagged by alpha-particles. The EURITRACK project consists in developing: a transportable deuterium-tritium neutron generator including a position sensitive alpha detector (8×8 matrix of YAP:Ce crystals coupled to a multi-anode photomultiplier), fast neutron and gamma-ray detectors, front-end electronics to perform coincidence and spectroscopic measurements, and an integrated software which manages neutron generator and detectors positioning, data acquisition and analysis. Hardware components have been developed and tested by the consortium partners. Current status of this work and provisional performances of the system assessed by Monte Carlo calculations are presented.

Mots clés: nuclear instrumentation; Cargo Container; Associated Particle Technique; EURITRACK; Civil Security; Neutron Inspection; detector; gamma-ray radiation; neutron; spectrometry; gamma spectrometry

Domaines: Instrumentations et Détecteurs [physics.ins-det]; Physique Nucléaire Expérimentale [nucl-ex]

Bertrand Perot, Gregory Perret, Alain Mariani, Jean-Luc Ma, Jean-Louis Szabo, et al.. The EURITRACK project: development of a tagged neutron inspection system for cargo containers. SPIE Defense and Security Symposium, Apr 2006, Orlando, United States. pp.621305, ⟨10.1117/12.665380⟩. ⟨cea-02288213⟩