Joseph Fabritius

Imaging a nuclear reactor using cosmic ray muons

The passage of muons through matter is dominated by the Coulomb interaction with electrons and nuclei. The muon interaction with electrons leads to continuous energy loss and stopping of the muons. The muon interaction with nuclei leads to angular diffusion. We present experimental images of a nuclear reactor, the AGN-201M reactor at the University of New Mexico, using data measured with a particle tracker built from a set of sealed drift tubes. The data are compared with a geant4 model. In both the data and simulation, we identify specific regions corresponding to elements of the reactor structure, including its core, moderator, and shield.

Analysis of muon radiography of the Toshiba nuclear critical assembly reactor

A 1.2 × 1.2 m2 muon tracker was moved from Los Alamos to the Toshiba facility at Kawasaki, Japan, where it was used to take ∼4 weeks of data radiographing the Toshiba Critical Assembly Reactor with cosmic ray muons. In this paper, we describe the analysis procedure, show results of this experiment, and compare the results to Monte Carlo predictions. The results validate the concept of using cosmic rays to image the damaged cores of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors.

Detecting special nuclear material using muon-induced neutron emission

Abstract The penetrating ability of cosmic ray muons makes them an attractive probe for imaging dense materials. Here, we describe experimental results from a new technique that uses neutrons generated by cosmic-ray muons to identify the presence of special nuclear material (SNM). Neutrons emitted from SNM are used to tag muon-induced fission events in actinides and laminography is used to form images of the stopping material. This technique allows the imaging of SNM-bearing objects tagged using muon tracking detectors located above or to the side of the objects, and may have potential applications in warhead verification scenarios. During the experiment described here we did not attempt to distinguish the type or grade of the SNM.

Analysis of the multigroup model for muon tomography based threat detection

We compare different algorithms for detecting a 5 cm tungsten cube using cosmic ray muon technology. In each case, a simple tomographic technique was used for position reconstruction, but the scattering angles were used differently to obtain a density signal. Receiver operating characteristic curves were used to compare images made using average angle squared, median angle squared, average of the squared angle, and a multi-energy group fit of the angular distributions for scenes with and without a 5 cm tungsten cube. The receiver operating characteristic curves show that the multi-energy group treatment of the scattering angle distributions is the superior method for image reconstruction.

Imaging of a reactor with muons

A technical demonstration to image a research reactor, Toshiba Nuclear Critical Assembly, with cosmic-ray muons is presented. The demonstration was performed as a precursor to Fukushima Daiichi muon imaging. We have obtained resolution of 3 cm during 1 month of exposure time. This result is in agreement with previous simulation results conducted on Fukushima Daiichi reactors 1 and 2.