Abstract

Every year, 700 million twenty-foot (container) equivalent units pass through the container terminals of the harbours all over the world. Only a small percentage (34%) are scanned to inspect the presence of radioactive materials. The need for controls is hampered essentially by three factors: the amount of both time and personnel necessary to control each container and the use of scanning methods based on systems potentially harmful for the personnel itself. Muon tomography can become a strategy for fast and reliable inspection of containers without using ionizing radiation. This technology takes advantage of multiple Coulomb scattering of the muons (particle produced by cosmic rays) through media to understand the composition and the geometry of the scanned volume. The TECNOMUSE project has the purpose to realize a muon tomography scanner based on a novel geometry and, for the first time, using Resistive Plate Chambers detectors. In this work, the preliminary results from the TECNOMUSE scanner are evaluated via Monte Carlo simulations. Many different simulations have been made with the aim to assess the detection capabilities of the device, its spatial resolution and the time required to reconstruct and distinguish different materials.

Details

Title
TECNOMUSE: a novel, RPC-based, muon tomography scanner for the control of container terminals
Author
Preziosi, E 1 ; Arcieri, F 2 ; Caltabiano, A 3 ; Camarri, P 3 ; Casagrande, S 2 ; Cavicchioni, D 4 ; Danza, F A 5 ; Fabrizi, E 6 ; Fabrizi, M 6 ; Festa, G 7 ; Fornaro, C 8 ; Marchese, F 1 ; Merella, D 2 ; Morone, M C 1 ; Picella, P 4 ; Picozza, P 3 ; Pizzimento, L 3 ; Rocchi, A 3 ; Santonico, R 3 ; Senesi, R 1 ; Sparvoli, R 3 ; Todesco, G M 5 ; Cianchi, A 3 

 NAST Center and Department of Physics, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Rome, Italy 
 INUIT Foundation, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Rome, Italy 
 NAST Center and Department of Physics, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Rome, Italy; Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Sezione di Roma Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy 
 DSTECH srl, Rome, Italy 
 Digital Video srl, Rome, Italy 
 General Tecnica srl, Monte San Giovanni Campano (FR), Italy 
 Museo Storico della Fisica e Centro Studi e Ricerche “Enrico Fermi”, Rome, Italy 
 Faculty of Engineering, International Telematic University UNINETTUNO 
Publication year
2020
Publication date
May 2020
Publisher
IOP Publishing
ISSN
17426588
e-ISSN
17426596
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2557298745
Copyright
© 2020. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.