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DTRA’s advancements in nuclear and radiological detection
A new, more complex nuclear age has begun. Echoing the tensions of the Cold War amid rapidly evolving nuclear and radiological threats, preparedness in the modern age is a contest of scientific innovation. The Research and Development Directorate (RD) at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) is charged with winning this contest.
Can Liao, Haori Yang, Zhengzhi Liu, Jason P. Hayward
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 5 | May 2019 | Pages 736-747
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1522885
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This work presents the design of a position-sensitive detector that we are evaluating for cosmic-ray muon imaging. The position-sensitive detector consists of an EJ-200 plastic scintillator panel that is 32 × 32 × 2.5 cm in dimension. A quantity of 32 parallel grooves, each 2 mm wide and 4 mm deep with a pitch of 1 cm, are carved on the top and bottom sides, in perpendicular orientation, of a scintillator panel. Two wavelength shifting optical fibers are embedded in each groove for light collection and transport. The optical fibers from each channel are coupled to one pixel of a Hamamatsu H8500C multi-anode photomultiplier tube. An encoding technique using a one-dimensional resistor network was developed to reduce the number of required readout channels for position determination. The position calibration was performed with a blue light emitting diode. The detector was shown to achieve position resolution of ~1 cm (sigma).