2010 MRes projects
- A feasibility study of the use of ground penetrating radar and metal oxide semiconductor sensors on a mobile platform for security applications
- The use of forensic evidence in the prosecution of terrorism cases in Britain
- Scintillation materials for the detection of special nuclear materials (SNMs)
- Looking beyond borders: Identification, information and the diffusion of conflicts.
- How hard can it be?: A study investigating user trust decisions in e-commerce
- Non-contact object localisation for automated 'on-belt- tomosynthesis
- Immmunising the Internet
- Investigating forward scatter radar for maritime target detection using statistical and comparative study
- The spatial distribution of post-blast RDX residue: Forensic implications
- Factors influencing intelligence analysts performance in using Bayesian and automated analysis of competing hypotheses
- Secure digital archive search using a probably approximately correct architecture
- Constraints and prospects of the application of scientific rigour to conflict early warning in Africa
- Prediction of crime patterns emerging from simulated search trajectories of individual offenders
- Download warnings: A rational rejection of security advice?
- The effectiveness of vehicle security devices to prevent car crime in Chile
- Inferring user behaviour despite wireless network encryption
- A feasibility study of the use of ground penetrating radar and metal oxide semiconductor sensors on a mobile platform for security applications
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Scintillation materials for the detection of special nuclear materials (SNMs)
22 February 2012
A feasibility study was carried out to assess the use of a commercially available gadolinium-loaded liquid scintillator (EJ-331), combined with a photomultiplier tube (PMT) and data acquisition equipment, for neutron detection. This was of interest due to its potential application (once scaled up) for the detection of special nuclear materials (SNMs). SNMs are a significant neutron source, and this is the key to their detection due to the difficulty in shielding this penetrating radiation.
Natural background neutron radiation levels are low, so higher neutron radiation levels can be strongly indicative of the presence of SNMs compared to gamma rays, which have little diagnostic power where there are high levels of natural background radioactivity.
The necessary materials were procured and assembled, then tested with a californium-252 neutron source and caesium-137 gamma-ray source in a laboratory at the Home Office Centre for Applied Science and Technology. Three types of calculations were carried out on the recorded data (tail-to-total integrals, constant fraction thresholds and rise times), and a pattern emerged (most clearly in the rise time analyses) where the gamma-ray source was used.
The neutron events were not visible – however, it was concluded that this was due to limitations in the equipment, and simple modifications to the PMT and/or speed of data acquisition would allow these to be identified.
