Analysis of Recent Manifests for Goods Imported through US Ports
Several active interrogation techniques are being developed to detect shielded special nuclear materials (SNM) hidden in cargo containers loaded on container ships arriving at US ports. It raises the questions of the types of cargos in which SNM could be hidden, and their impact on detected signatures. Since the definition of a set of ''typical'' or standard cargos has proven to be difficult, we analyzed shipping manifests for US imports shipped through North American ports collected on 14 days distributed over 12 months. From these data, we generated several distribution functions such as commodity categories, average densities, and packaging types that could be of interest to the cargo scanning community. One of the cargo scanning techniques currently under development at LLNL is based on neutron active interrogation, and relies on the unique signature of beta-delayed gammas emitted by fission products in the 3 to 7 MeV energy range. {sup 19}F(n,a){sup 16}N, has been identified as the main potential interference for 7 and 9 MeV neutron beams. Estimates of cargo compositions based on manifests identified as containing fluorine are presented.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 900161
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-TR-225708; TRN: US0702216
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Detection of Special Nuclear Material in Cargo Containers Using Neutron Interrogation