The Muon Portal is a recently born project that plans to
build a large area muon detector for a noninvasive inspection of
shipping containers in the ports, searching for the presence of
potential fissile (U, Pu) threats. The technique employed by the
project is the well-known muon tomography, based on cosmic muon
scattering from high-Z materials. The design and operational
parameters of the muon portal under construction will be described
in this paper, together with preliminary simulation and test
results.
The Muon Portal Project aims at the construction of a large volume detector to inspect the content of travelling containers for the identification of high-Z hidden materials (U, Pu or other fissile samples), exploiting the secondary cosmic-ray muon radiation. An image of these materials is achieved reconstructing the deviations of the muons from their original trajectories inside the detector volume, by means of two particle trackers, placed one below and one above the container. The scan is performed without adding any external radiation, in a few minutes and with a high spatial and angular resolution. The detector consists of 4800 scintillating strips with two wavelength shifting (WLS) fibers inside each strip, coupled to Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs). A smart strategy for the read out system allows a considerable reduction of the number of the readout channels. Actually, an intense measurement campaign is in progress to carefully characterize any single component of the detector. A prototype of one of the 48 detection modules (1 × 3 m 2 ) is actually under construction. This paper presents the detector architecture and the preliminary results.
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