Advances on the development of the detection system of C-BORD’s rapidly relocatable tagged neutron inspection

Abstract

The European H2020 project entitled “effective container inspection at border control point” (C-BORD) focuses on the development and in-situ tests of a comprehensive, cost-effective solution for the generalized non-intrusive inspection (NII) of containers and large-volume freight at the European Union border. The opening procedures of suspect containers are time consuming and expensive for economical and safety reasons; therefore, to reduce such operations, the C-BORD project aims to develop a set of technologies that can improve the quality of NII. Among these techniques, a tagged neutron inspection system is being developed in the C-BORD project. It will be a second-line defense system, to be used on sealed containers to detect explosives, illicit drugs, and chemical agents in suspect voxels (elementary volume units). This method employs a beam of tagged neutrons and a set of NaI(Tl) and LaBr[Formula: see text](Ce) scintillators, which will be used to detect prompt gamma rays produced by the neutron interactions. Here we report the advances on the development of the C-BORD’s rapidly relocatable tagged neutron inspection system, in particular the comprehensive characterization of the NaI(Tl) and LaBr[Formula: see text](Ce) gamma detectors (time and energy resolutions, high-count-rate behavior), the digital analysis for time-coincidence measurements and the data acquisition system (DAQ).