It is estimated that more than 110 million active mines are a permanent threat in some 70 countries, resulting in about 2000 casualties per month, most of them being civilians. The anti-personnel mines (APM) and anti-tank mines (ATM) found in several affected countries are mostly buried, non metallic or with minimum metal content; the most dangerous types are PROM_l, MRUD, PMR_3, and TMR_P6.Using the classical technologies (metal detector, dogs, prod ding) finding, localizing and identifying the landmines is a time consuming, expensive and extremely dangerous proce dure. In addition, it will take a long time to de-mine the affected countries, mainly because the same tedious procedure has to be applied to all areas suspected to be contaminated with landmines. Mined areas are generally close to the battle fields, being consequently heavily infested by metal pieces from the explosions of different ordnances (explosion of an ordnance can result in more than 1000 small metal frag ments). The presence of metal clutter produces a large number of false alarms in the metal detectors (MD) com monly used in de-mining. As a consequence, there is a need for a technological breakthrough in this field to solve defini tively the land-mine problem.Moreover, the threat of terrorist use of explosive devices and chemical, biological or radioactive agents has become realistic since the SARIN attack in the Tokyo subway system on March 20, 1995 and after the tragic events of September 11, 2001. The possibility of further terrorist actions against civil population is one of the most important issues on the international political agenda. An often evoked scenario implies the use of the so-called "dirty bomb": a sizeable quantity of radioactive material detonated by conventional explosive and dispersed in the environment. The illicit traf ficking of explosives and fissile material through conventional commercial networks (air, maritime and terrestrial) repre sents therefore a real challenge to civil security for future years. Manual and visual inspection of large commercial pay loads at terrestrial borders (trucks), seaports (containers) and airports (check-in luggage) would not be a viable solution both from efficiency considerations and for legal reasons. It is mandatory to realise standoff integrated inspection systems of cargo by means of imaging and analytical methods based on a sound technology to identify threat materials. X-ray or gamma-ray based imaging is the only technique which enables a direct view of objects embedded or buried in soil. State of the art systems can give good precision density measurements with high-resolution three-dimensional images. The observed shapes and mechanical structure of detected objects may help to identify a particular mine type or at least to distinguish a mine from other buried objects such as metal scrap. Metal can be distinguished further by the avail able gross information about the elemental content of the inspected item (low Z vs. high Z discrimination).Two recent examples of systems unde...

The energy resolution of a LaBr(Ce) detector has been studied as a function of the count rate up to 340 kHz by using a 12bit 250 MS/s V1720 digitizer. The time resolution achieved by processing off line the digitized signals has been also determined. When results are compared with the ones obtained by using standard NIM electronics, it appears that the energy resolution obtained with the V1720 digitizer is better than the one with the NIM standard whereas the time resolution is poorer. However the time resolution by using the V1720 digitizer of about 1.2 ns [FWHM] seems to be sufficient for applications in Non-Destructive Analysis of large objects with tagged neutron beams

An integrated mobile system for port security is presented. The system is designed to perform active investigations by using the tagged neutron inspection technique of suspect dangerous materials as well as passive measurements of neutrons and gamma rays to search and identify radioactive and special nuclear materials. The system has been employed in detection tests of special nuclear material as well as in a seaport demonstration

A new Tagged Neutron Inspection System (TNIS) able to detect illicit materials such as explosives and narcotics in cargo containers has been developed within the EURopean Illicit TRAfficing Countermeasures Kit (EURITRACK) project. After the R&D phase, the inspection portal has been installed and commissioned at the Rijeka seaport in Croatia, where it has been operated in connection with the existing X-ray scanner for a first two-month demonstration campaign. Results obtained are presented and discussed in this paper.

Abstract. The detection of special nuclear material has been studied with the SMANDRA mobile inspection system used both as a high sensitivity passive neutron/gamma spectroscopic tool and as an active inspection device using tagged neutrons. The detection of plutonium samples is possible with passive interrogation, the passive detection of uranium being much more difficult because of the low neutron yield and of the easiness of shielding the gamma rays. However, we show that active interrogation with tagged neutrons is able to provide signatures for the discrimination of uranium against other materials.