Integration of Ground- Penetrating Radar and Gamma-Ray Detectors for Nonintrusive Characterisation of Buried Radioactive Objects

Abstract

The characterisation of buried radioactive wastes is challenging because they are not readily accessible. Therefore, this study reports on the development of a method for integrating ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and gamma-ray detector measurements for nonintrusive characterisation of buried radioactive objects. The method makes use of the density relationship between soil permittivity models and the flux measured by gamma ray detectors to estimate the soil density, depth and radius of a disk-shaped buried radioactive object simultaneously. The method was validated using numerical simulations with experimentally-validated gamma-ray detector and GPR antenna models. The results showed that the method can simultaneously retrieve the soil density, depth and radius of disk-shaped radioactive objects buried in soil of varying conditions with a relative error of less than 10%. This result will enable the development of an integrated GPR and gamma ray detector tool for rapid characterisation of buried radioactive objects encountered during monitoring and decontamination of nuclear sites and facilities.

Frequency–Wavenumber Analysis of Deep Learning-based Super Resolution 3D GPR Images

“…To effectively detect underground cavities which are most likely extended to sinkholes, various nondestructive testing (NDT) techniques have taken the limelight. Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is one of the widely accepted NDT tools thanks to its high sensitivity to underground media change and rapid inspection capability for broad target areas [5][6][7]. However, the physical interpretation of field GPR data for underground object detection and classification is still challenging in some cases, because electromagnetic waves, which are reflected from a target underground object, are often weaker than underground media's inhomogeneity and undesired measurement noises [8,9].…”