TY - JOUR
T1 - Experimental demonstration and modeling of a robotic neutron detector with spectral and directional sensitivity for treaty verification
AU - Lepowsky, Eric
AU - Kütt, Moritz
AU - Aslam, Soha
AU - Fetsch, Henry
AU - Snell, Steven
AU - Glaser, Alexander
AU - Goldston, Robert J.
N1 - Funding Information:
The experimental measurements would not have been possible without the support of numerous researchers, staff, and the Health Physics team from Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory: George Ascione, Andy Carpe, Darren Thompson, Cathy Saville, Robert Hitchner, Susan Thiel and Patti Bruno. We thank Kyle Haske (Argonne National Laboratory) and Andrey Mozhayev (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) for providing information on the source capsule configuration. Eric Lepowsky’s contributions to this project have been supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowshi, United States under Grant No. DGE-2039656 . This work was partly supported by the Consortium for Monitoring, Technology, and Verification under Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration, United States award number DE-NA0003920 , as well as the U.S. Department of Energy under contract number DE-AC02-09CH11466 . The United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes.
Funding Information:
The experimental measurements would not have been possible without the support of numerous researchers, staff, and the Health Physics team from Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory: George Ascione, Andy Carpe, Darren Thompson, Cathy Saville, Robert Hitchner, Susan Thiel and Patti Bruno. We thank Kyle Haske (Argonne National Laboratory) and Andrey Mozhayev (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) for providing information on the source capsule configuration. Eric Lepowsky's contributions to this project have been supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowshi, United States under Grant No. DGE-2039656. This work was partly supported by the Consortium for Monitoring, Technology, and Verification under Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration, United States award number DE-NA0003920, as well as the U.S. Department of Energy under contract number DE-AC02-09CH11466. The United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2022/10/11
Y1 - 2022/10/11
N2 - International safeguards and arms control agreements often require labor-intensive, intrusive onsite inspections to perform verification tasks. The ability to localize a neutron source and/or characterize a neutron field may be imperative for identifying anomalies. We are interested in the role of autonomous mobile robots, which, if designed properly, may be more effective and efficient and less intrusive than their human counterparts. Toward developing such a capability, we have constructed the N-SpecDir Bot, comprised of three boron-coated straw detectors azimuthally-distributed within a cylinder of high-density polyethylene, which is mounted on an omni-directional robotic platform. Our N-SpecDir Bot is specifically designed to provide spectral and directional sensitivity, in addition to gross counts, by utilizing the signals from the three detectors. The detection system has been extensively characterized by MCNP modeling, which has been benchmarked to experiments conducted at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. We demonstrate the spectral and directional sensitivity experimentally and in simulation, and provide a simple yet robust method for directional measurements.
AB - International safeguards and arms control agreements often require labor-intensive, intrusive onsite inspections to perform verification tasks. The ability to localize a neutron source and/or characterize a neutron field may be imperative for identifying anomalies. We are interested in the role of autonomous mobile robots, which, if designed properly, may be more effective and efficient and less intrusive than their human counterparts. Toward developing such a capability, we have constructed the N-SpecDir Bot, comprised of three boron-coated straw detectors azimuthally-distributed within a cylinder of high-density polyethylene, which is mounted on an omni-directional robotic platform. Our N-SpecDir Bot is specifically designed to provide spectral and directional sensitivity, in addition to gross counts, by utilizing the signals from the three detectors. The detection system has been extensively characterized by MCNP modeling, which has been benchmarked to experiments conducted at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. We demonstrate the spectral and directional sensitivity experimentally and in simulation, and provide a simple yet robust method for directional measurements.
KW - Directional sensitivity
KW - Neutron detection
KW - Nuclear safeguards
KW - Robotic detector
KW - Spectral sensitivity
KW - Treaty verification
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U2 - 10.1016/j.nima.2022.167362
DO - 10.1016/j.nima.2022.167362
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85137079775
VL - 1041
JO - Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment
JF - Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment
SN - 0168-9002
M1 - 167362
ER -