Radiological risks of neutron interrogation of food

Abstract

In recent years there has been growing interest in the use of neutron scanning techniques for security. Neutron techniques with a range of energy spectra including thermal, white and fast neutrons have been shown to work in different scenarios. As international interest in neutron scanning increases the risk of activating cargo, especially foodstuffs must be considered. There has been a limited amount of research into the activation of foods by neutron beams and we have sought to improve the amount of information available. In this paper we show that for three important metrics; activity, ingestion dose and Time to Background there is a strong dependence on the food being irradiated and a weak dependence on the energy of irradiation. Previous studies into activation used results based on irradiation of pharmaceuticals as the basis for research into activation of food. The earlier work reports that (24)Na production is the dominant threat which motivated the search for (24)Na(n,γ)(24)Na in highly salted foods. We show that (42)K can be more significant than (24)Na in low sodium foods such as Bananas and Potatoes.

Effects of neutron radiation generated in deep space-like environments on food resources

“…Studies on the irradiation of food resources with photons and electrons had been carried out for the purpose of sterilization and prevention of germination 12 , and their chemical toxicity had also been investigated 13 . Neutrons are now used in airport inspections and research into the effects of neutron radiation on food has begun 14 . In contrast to the effects of the irradiation of γ’s and electrons, the neutron irradiation involves completely different interactions such as the neutron capture and the nuclear reactions producing protons and α particles.…”