Speaker
Description
As of 2023, global nuclear weapon arsenals comprise approx. 13,000 warheads. Despite the renewed arms race among the nuclear weapon owners, it is the declared goal of many nations to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons. While this is first a political task, technical research can support the goal by providing technical verification approaches for future international treaties. An ongoing challenge in this regard is the detection of fissile material – the key component of nuclear weapons – from a distance. The International Partnership for Nuclear Disarmament Verification, a network of technical experts from 25 states, has listed that challenge as a technology gap.
Currently discussed methods to detect fissile material are based on particles resulting from its radioactive decay (gammas, neutrons), which can be easily shielded. To overcome this limitation, we propose a new measurement approach, transmission-based muography. Using a muon telescope, we want to detect fissile material from a distance in large structures (10-100 m size), e.g. storage bunkers. So far, most applications of muography in nuclear security are scattering-based measurements, which require two detectors on both sides of the object of interest. However, transmission-based muography, requiring only one detector, allows to examine also larger structures.
Our contribution will outline potential application scenarios and details of the approach to find hidden significant quantities of plutonium or highly-enriched uranium. Additionally, we show simulation results illustrating necessary detector properties and calculate required measurement times.
