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

• 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.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Fysik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Physical Sciences (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Associated Particle Technique

Cargo Container

Civil Security

EURITRACK

Neutron Inspection

Cargo handling

Composition

Data acquisition

Detectors

Explosives

Gamma rays

Neutron sources

Nondestructive examination

Associated Particle Techniques

Cargo Containers

Inspection

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)