nuclear-news

Possible new device for detecting uranium and plutonium in cargo

Gamma-ray method flags up nuclear stashes Physicists investigating technique to enhance detection of uranium and plutonium in cargo. Gabriel Popkin 11 April 2015 It is a border-control agent’s nightmare: a terrorist sneaks uranium or plutonium through a seaport and into an urban centre, and uses it to set off a dirty bomb or a nuclear weapon.

On 13 April at the American Physical Society meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, physicists will present research on a cargo-screening technology that could foil such a plot. The researchers say that a device involving the approach, which would scan shipping containers with beams of precisely tuned γ-rays, would be safer and more effective than current technology. The device could be several metres tall and stationary, or a smaller, portable unit.

Although the nuclear reaction that produces these γ-rays was demonstrated as early as the 1950s, for decades, no one had tested it for use in nuclear inspection, says Richard Sheffield, a physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico who was not involved in the latest work. Sheffield calculates that the method could decrease the radiation needed to detect nuclear materials by more than ten times, and calls the work “a significant advance”…….. the official, who asked not to be named, noted that a practical system would require smaller accelerators than the researchers currently use. It would also need to be tested on cargo containers, and meet various criteria related to the cost and complexity of operation. The Department of Homeland Security or other sources might support such development, he said; a practical device could still be a decade away…….http://www.nature.com/news/gamma-ray-method-flags-up-nuclear-stashes-1.17300

April 13, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general