Nuclear Fingerprinting With a Scintillating Fiber Detector

Field Command, Defense Special Weapons Agency (FCDSWA) funded the development, test, and evaluation of a fiber-optic fingerprinting device (FOFD) for the purpose of identifying nuclear weapons and nuclear-weapon components. Research staff at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) constructed and tested the detector during FY-96 and FY-97. The scintillating glass fibers used in the FOFD were developed by U.S. DOE at PNNL. These fibers respond to both neutrons and gamma rays and yield a pulse-height spectrum that contains information about the total radiation output of the target. Given a limited set of test samples, the detector succeeded in discriminating them using vector analyses of the pulse-height spectrum. The design, fabrication, and field testing of the detector are discussed together with data analysis and results.