Education and Training Series #67: A Gas Cherenkov Muon Spectrometer for Nuclear Security Applications
Part of a webinar series hosted by the GIF Education and Training Working Group since 2016.
Who should attend?
Policymakers, industry professionals, regulators, researchers, students, the general public.
About the "GIF Education and Training" Webinars
These webinars, organised by the GIF Education and Training Working Group are streamed live monthly. The recordings and slide decks are accessible after the webinar on this website. These webinars cover a very broad range of technical and policy related topics. At the end of 2023 they have been viewed by more than 15000 people (approximately half of the views during the live streams and the other half views being of the archives on the public GIF website). In total, the GIF webinars have reached Generation IV enthusiasts, scientists, and engineers in more than 80 countries.
These webinars are organised and hosted by the GIF Education and Training Working Group (ETWG).
About this Webinar
Cosmic ray muons have been considered as a non-conventional radiation probe for imaging large and dense objects because they are high-energetic and penetrative. To maximize the utilizable of cosmic ray muons in engineering applications, two important quantities, trajectory and momentum, must be known. The muon trajectories are easily reconstructed using two-fold detector arrays with a high spatial resolution. However, precise measurement of muon momentum is difficult to achieve without deploying large and expensive spectrometers. In our research, we developed a novel muon spectrometer using multi-layer pressurized gas Cherenkov radiators and demonstrate its functionality for muon momentum measurement using high fidelity Gen IV simulations. In addition, we developed a new imaging algorithm for muon tomography, or mPoCA, by integrating muon momentum information into the original PoCA algorithm. The results of reconstructed images of various materials using both PoCA and mPoCA algorithms will be presented and compared. Not only is the image resolution significantly improved but also we were able to visually differentiate shielding material (Pb) from special nuclear materials otherwise impossible to see with the original PoCA.
Presentation made during the webinar
Meet the presenter
Dr. Junghyun Bae recently completed his Ph.D. at the School of Nuclear Engineering at Purdue University. He will join the Used Fuel and Nuclear Material Disposition group of the Nuclear Energy and Fuel Cycle Division at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a Eugene P. Wigner Distinguished Staff Fellow. His research focuses on the development of a high-resolution fieldable muon spectrometer using multi-layer pressurized gas Cherenkov radiators and its applications, i.e., muon tomography, nuclear security, Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) casks imaging. He earned his M.S degree in nuclear engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and his B.S. degree in Nuclear and Quantum Engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). Dr. Bae won the ‘Pitch Your PhD’ competition during the 2021 ANS Winter Meeting and Technology Expo in Washington, D.C. He has also been nominated and awarded the Roy G. Post Foundation scholarship, ANS, and KSEA graduate scholarships for his contribution to the safe management of nuclear materials.