A New device of low-cost and transportable for detecting nuclear materials with a neutron source

Komeda, Masao   ; Tanabe, Kosuke*; Toh, Yosuke   

For the social diffusion of low-cost and transportable devices for detecting nuclear materials, we have developed a novel approach called the active rotation method, which utilizes a rotating neutron source near the object being measured to detect nuclear materials. The device to rotate a neutron source can be produced at low-cost and it is compact. A neutron source is rotated with several thousand rpm at measuring, and it is possible to detect nuclear materials by confirming the deformation of the time-distribution spectrum obtained by a neutron detector. In addition to the rotation device, we have also developed a low-cost neutron detector utilizing water Cherenkov radiation. In the presentation, we will introduce this newly developed a rotation device and demonstrate its nuclear material detection capabilities. The measurement system consists of a rotation device and a water Cherenkov detector for a neutron detector. The measurement object is a polyethylene container containing 7 g of Pu-239. As a result of the experiment, we confirmed the successful detection of nuclear material using our device. The system is compact, transportable, and significantly less expensive than traditional methods, making it a promising solution for nuclear security applications.