Hamburg 2009 – scientific programme

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AGA: Arbeitsgruppe Physik und Abrüstung

AGA 5: Verification and Detection

AGA 5.5: Talk

Friday, March 6, 2009, 12:30–13:00, VMP 9 HS

Testing of portal monitor methods to discover illicit trafficking of anthropogenic radioactivity in operational field use — •Alexander Ramseger et al. — Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker Centre for Science and Peace Research

The goal of this project is the detection of illicit trafficking radioactive substances. These substances have a high risk potential in their intentional or careless use.

The detection systems used up to now are not sensitive enough to discover all relevant nuclides (false negative) and have a high false alarm rate (false positive). By an improved gamma spectrometric analysis as well as an active detection with neutron radiation, the false alarm rate could be minimised and the amount of detected substances increased. The first step is to determine the improvement potential regarding measurement methods and analytical algorithms. The most promising methods and algorithms should be developed and than tested.

At the Hamburg harbour first measurements were conducted to compare gamma spectrometric detectors with an already installed portal monitor system for gamma rate measurements of containers. The average distance of the detectors (portal monitor as well as gamma spectrometric detectors) to the containers depended on the traffic lane of the lorry carrying the container through the portal monitor but was in average about 2 meters.

The results of these measurements, which are presented in this talk, are a first basis for further search of improvements.