DRiFT Features for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Applications

The ability to accurately model and simulate detectors is important for various applications relevant to nuclear safeguards. DRiFT, or Detector Response Function Toolkit, provides realistic detector responses by post-processing MCNP®, or Monte Carlo N-Particle, PTRAC, or Particle Track Output, outputs for a variety of detectors. The MCNP code is a widely verified radiation transport code which can model complex sources and geometries. DRiFT builds upon this powerful tool by considering important detector physics and electronics considerations not native to the MCNP code to generate a detector signal analogous to spectra observed experimentally. Accurate simulations of detector response functions are valuable for the design of detector systems and the applicability of these detectors for a given experiment. The ability to generate high-fidelity detector response signals by simulating experiments with a diverse range of sources and geometries could be useful to train machine learning algorithms that can later be used to analyze measurement data. These simulations can also determine the effectiveness of a given detector in field deployments for nuclear safeguards applications. This talk will demonstrate the applications of DRiFT and showcase improvements to the detectors and capabilities relevant to nuclear non-proliferation. Gas-filled neutron detector capabilities were enhanced by allowing the user to input empirical dead time parameters. Preliminary work was completed to compare a BeRP ball benchmark NPOD detector data set to a modeled detector in DRiFT. This talk will highlight existing capabilities in DRiFT and show the value and growing flexibility of this tool for various detector and experimental configurations for nuclear non-proliferation applications.