Year
1995
Abstract
To facilitate the process of re-entry vehicle on-site inspections, it would be useful to have an imaging technique which would allow the counting of deployed multiple nuclear warheads without significant disassembly of a missile's structure. Since neutrons cannot easily be shielded without massive amounts of materials, they offer a means of imaging the separate sources inside a sealed vehicle. Thermal neutrons carry no detailed spectral information, so their detection should not be as intrusive as gamma ray imaging. A prototype device for imaging at close range with thermal neutrons has been constructed using an array of 3He position-sensitive gas proportional counters combined with a uniformly redundant coded aperture array. A sealed 252Cf source surrounded by a polyethylene moderator is used as a test source. By means of slit and pinhole experiments, count rates of image-forming neutrons (those which cast a shadow of a Cd aperture on the detector) are compared with the count rates for background neutrons. The resulting ratio, which limits the available image contrast, is measured as a function of distance from the source. The envelope of performance of the instrument is defined by the contrast ratio, the angular resolution, and the total count rate as a function of distance from the source. These factors will determine whether such an instrument could be practical as a tool for treaty verification.