APPLICATIONS OF TECHNOLOGY:

• Screening of luggage and cargo for explosives and fissile material
• Gamma ray and neutron detection

ADVANTAGES:

• Produces short 5 nanosecond neutron pulses
• Minimizes alignment problems
• Reduces RF input power requirement
• Removes spurious background particle generation almost completely
• Drastically reduces beam power deposited into beam dump, decreasing cooling requirements

ABSTRACT:

Using a novel source and extraction geometry, Ka-Ngo Leung, Sami Hahto, and Taneli Kalvas of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have devised a method for generating neutron pulses of 5 nanoseconds or less that can be used to detect explosives or fissile material in cargo containers.

The invention significantly improves upon existing short-duration neutron pulse sources that use a toroidal source and radial extraction. Rather than using multiple-slit extraction, which complicates alignment, the new method extracts and focuses the plasma, which is formed with an axial RF source, in a novel manner. The beam is accelerated through a three-stage acceleration column to a titanium target. The device can produce 5-nanosecond pulses.

In the new Berkeley Lab neutron generator, nuclear particles are generated only during the small time interval that the beam strikes the target. This greatly reduces the beam power delivered to the beam dump, requiring substantially less cooling and almost completely removing unwanted background particle generation. Similar spectrographic techniques can also be used for gamma ray detection, with the gamma ray sensor positioned at a greater distance from the material to be interrogated.

STATUS:

• Published Patent Application WO/2008/112034 available at www.wipo.int. Published US Application 12/529,689 available at www.uspto.gov. Available for licensing or collaborative research.

To learn more about licensing a technology from LBNL see http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/licensing/index.html.

REFERENCE NUMBER: IB-2215

SEE THESE OTHER BERKELEY LAB TECHNOLOGIES IN THIS FIELD:

• Cylindrical Neutron Generator with Nested Option, IB-1764
• Neutron-based System for Nondestructive Imaging, IB-1794
• Mini Neutron Tube, IB-1793a
• Ultra-short Ion and Neutron Pulse Production, IB-1707
• Compact Spherical Neutron Generator, IB-1675
• Detecting Nuclear Materials in Containers Using High-energy Gamma Rays, IB-1897