Optimizing the Tracking Efficiency for Cosmic Ray Muon Tomography

Green, J.A.; Alexander, Chris; Asaki, Thomas J.; Bacon, Jeffrey; Blanpied, G.; Borozdin, K.; Canabal-Rey, A.; Cannon, Matthew; Clark, Deborah J.; Espinoza, C.; Figueroa, E.; Fraser, Andrew M.; Galassi, M.; Gomez, J. J.; Gonzales, J.; Green, A.; Hengartner, Nicolas W.; Hogan, G. E.; Klimenko, A.; McGaughey, P. L.; McGregor, G.; Medina, J.; Morris, Christopher; Mosher, K.; Orum, Chris; Pazuchanics, F. E.; Priedhorsky, W. C.; Sanchez, A.; Saunders, Alexander; Schirato, R.; Schultz, L.; Sossong, M.; Sottile, Matthew; Tenbrink, J.; Water, R. Van de; Vixie, Kevin R.; Wohlberg, Brendt

doi:10.1109/nssmic.2006.356157

Cited by 17 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…This drift time is measured and used to determine positional information. Planes of drift tubes were chosen by LANL for use in the Large Muon Tracker [17], and have therefore been proven to work for this application. They are also extensively used for muon tracking in high energy physics experiments such as ATLAS at CERN [18].…”

Section: B Drift Tubesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detector requirements for a cosmic ray muon scattering tomography system

Cox

Adsley

O’Malley

et al. 2008

2008 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record

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Cosmic ray muon scattering tomography is one of four techniques currently being investigated at AWE for the detection of special nuclear material (SNM). In order to develop a prototype muon detection system, it is necessary to consider the requirements of the radiation detectors with respect to; coincidence timing for system triggering; tracking of the muon trajectory; and determination of muon energy. The detector requirements for a prototype muon scattering tomography system are presented and a variety of detector types considered and assessed against these requirements.The advantages, disadvantages, potential compromises and compatibility with other complementary detection techniques are discussed. Future plans are outlined for an initial prototype and future, long-term development of a muon scattering tomography system for detection of SNM.is not therefore possible to tum this on or off: or to optimise the energy. Scattering tomography using cosmic ray muons may not provide a complete answer to the problem of illicit trafficking of RN materials, but could well form part of the solution. II. COSMIC RAY MUONSHigh energy cosmic rays -comprising roughly 90% protons, 9% a-particles and the remainder heavier nuclei -strike the upper reaches of the Earth's atmosphere at a rate of about 1000 1m 2 Isec [2]. These undergo deep inelastic collisions with molecules in the Earth's atmosphere to produce cascades of lighter particles. These include short-lived pions, which decay into muons.Muons have a rest energy of 105.7 MeV/c 2 , around 200 times that of an electron, and can be either positively or negatively charged. Although they have a short lifetime of --2.2 micro seconds, their near-relativistic speeds mean they form a significant fraction of the earth's cosmic radiation at sea level. The muon flux at sea level is approximately 10,000 m-2 min-1 [3], which is roughly equivalent to one through the surface of the hand every second. This is, however, dependent on a number of factors, including latitude, longitude, altitude, time in the solar cycle and angle. It is often claimed [4] that the intensity falls otT as cos 2 {) (where {) is the angle from the zenith) though a number of papers suggest that such statements may be rather sweeping [5][6][7]. The energy spectrum of cosmic ray muons at sea level varies over several orders of magnitude, from approximately lOMeV to 10 GeV. The graph below was generated using EXPACS [8] version 2.14, and assumes latitude of 52°. Integrating this curve with respect to energy suggests a total muon flux of 1.56 x 10-2 cm-2 sec-I, which is in agreement with the often quoted value of 10,000 m-2 min-l mentioned previously. Figure 1 also gives a mean muon energy of 4.01 GeV, which is the commonly used mean value.

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Section: B Drift Tubesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detector requirements for a cosmic ray muon scattering tomography system

Cox

Adsley

O’Malley

et al. 2008

2008 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record

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“…Alternative techniques to imaging have been proposed and include the development of monitoring algorithms suitable to provide a fast yes/no decision [28][29][30][31][32]. Existing muon detectors use, among others, drift-wire chambers, e.g., the Large and Mini Muon Trackers developed at LANL [33], and scintillating fibers, e.g., the CRIPT detector developed at AECL [17]. Delay line chambers have also been used at LANL [5] and small prototypes with gas electron multiplier detectors have been developed by the HEP lab at Florida Tech to determine muon positional information and demonstrate the application [27].Resistive plate chambers are also explored as a cost effective alternative to muon detection [34].Cox et al summarized the requirements for muon detector development concluding that coincidence timing in the order of nanoseconds, spatial resolution in the order of sub-mm and energy determination will be required for future applications [35].The role of cosmic ray muons becomes especially important since their use can be extended to non-destructive assessment of nuclear materials stored within sealed dense containers [9].…”

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confidence: 99%

Analysis of Spent Nuclear Fuel Imaging Using Multiple Coulomb Scattering of Cosmic Muons

Chatzidakis

Choi

Tsoukalas

2016

IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci.

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Cosmic ray muons passing through matter lose energy from inelastic collisions with electrons and are deflected from nuclei due to multiple Coulomb scattering. The strong dependence of scattering on atomic number Z and the recent developments on position sensitive muon detectors indicate that multiple Coulomb scattering could be an excellent candidate for spent nuclear fuel imaging. Muons present significant advantages over existing monitoring and imaging techniques and can play a central role in monitoring nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel stored in dense well shielded containers. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the applicability of multiple Coulomb scattering for imaging of spent nuclear fuel dry casks stored within vertical and horizontal commercial storage dry casks. Calculations of muon scattering were performed for various scenarios, including vertical and horizontal fully loaded dry casks, half loaded dry casks, dry casks with one row of fuel assemblies missing, dry casks with one fuel assembly missing and empty dry casks. Various detector sizes (1.2 m x 1.2 m, 2.4 m x 2.4 m and 3.6 m x 3.6 m) and number of muons (10 5 , 5·10 5 , 10 6 and 10 7 ) were used to assess the effect on image resolution. The Point-of-Closest-Approach (PoCA) algorithm was used for the reconstruction of the stored contents. The results demonstrate that multiple Coulomb scattering can be used to successfully reconstruct the dry cask contents and allow identification of all scenarios with the exception of one fuel assembly missing. In this case, an indication exists that a fuel assembly is not present; however the resolution of the imaging algorithm was not enough to identify exact location.*Corresponding author: schatzid@purdue.edu I. INTRODUCTIONSince the pioneering work of E.P. George [1] and L. Alvarez [2], relativistic muons have been shown to have the ability to penetrate dense materials and by monitoring the subsequent scattering and/or attenuation of muons, a measurable signal about the structure and composition of the interrogated material can be obtained [3]. Recently, cosmic ray muons have been investigated for volcano imaging and cargo scanning applications and their use has been extended to nuclear waste imaging and determination of molten nuclear fuel location in nuclear reactors having suffered from the effects of a severe accident similar to the one happened in Fukushima [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23].Earlier muon radiographic techniques were based on attenuation principles. A new promising method based on multiple Coulomb scattering was developed and demonstrated at LANL for detection of high-Z materials hidden in a large volume of low-Z materials, a situation representative of shielded material shielded hidden in a cargo container [24,25]. It was suggested that muon momentum measurement which can be achieved by indirectly measuring muon scattering in several layers of materials with known thickness could improve image resolution.This was later demonstrate...

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“…Several kinds of gaseous detectors have been investigated in previous researches, such as drift tubes, drift chambers, and GEM detectors [2][3][4][5]. Besides, the MRPC detector is also a satisfying choice, which features high-efficiency, high spatial resolution and inexpensive for large-scale [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A scalable digital pulse process module for the MRPC detector of muon tomography

Zeng

Deng

Zeng

et al. 2012

2012 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference Record (NSS/MIC)

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Muon tomography with cosmic ray muons is a novel technology for high-Z material detection, which requires large scale, high-efficiency, high spatial resolution detectors to track the muons. From previous studies, we conclude that the multi gap resistive plate chamber (MRPC) will be an excellent and inexpensive choice for this application, which also offers the possibility of introducing energy information of muons by TOF measurement to image reconstruction of muon tomography owning to the inherent high time resolution of MRPC. To get enough spatial resolution, the dedicated electronics is required to be able to handle thousands of readout channels. To keep the flexibility of charge and time measurement for detector research purpose, a fast preamp with waveform sampling combined with the Digital Pulse Process (DPP) technology was chosen as the readout solution. At present, an 8-ch current sensitive preamp ASIC has been designed and implemented for the SDPP module, and the switched capacitor array (SCA) chip DRS4 designed by the PSI was chosen as the sampler of the SDPP.

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Optimizing the Tracking Efficiency for Cosmic Ray Muon Tomography

Cited by 17 publications

References 1 publication

Detector requirements for a cosmic ray muon scattering tomography system

Detector requirements for a cosmic ray muon scattering tomography system

Analysis of Spent Nuclear Fuel Imaging Using Multiple Coulomb Scattering of Cosmic Muons

A scalable digital pulse process module for the MRPC detector of muon tomography

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