Muon tomography for dual purpose casks (MUTOMCA) project

In case of Loss of Continuity of Knowledge of a Dual Purpose Cask (DPC) Safeguards Inspectorates need to re-verify its content avoiding unloading of the cask. Reverification of spent nuclear fuel stored in a DPC is a major challenge as there is no readily available adequate Non Destructive Assay technique for this task. Recent development of innovative imaging techniques using cosmic muons and muon trackers (muon tomography) offers unique opportunities for safeguards. Cosmic muons can penetrate meters of dense material and therefore can be used to image the contents of DPC. Information about the material distribution inside the DPC can be obtained thanks to muon transmission and multiple Coulomb scattering, provided muon detectors can be placed around the DPC. The research project, named MUTOMCA (muon tomography for shielded casks), has started in September 2020. The main parties of this project are INFN Padova and Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH (FZJ). Two other parties, EURATOM and BGZ Company for Interim Storage (BGZ Gesellschaft für Zwischenlagerung mbH) are also involved in this project. A detector based on the drift tube technology will be produced and installed in the proximity of a partially loaded DPC during a field test. The objective of the field test will be recording of sufficient quantity of muons that have passed through the DPC. The recorded data then will be used to create the image of the contents of DPC thus allowing validation of earlier performed Monte Carlo calculations, which show that a missing assembly (assemblies) can be detected with the muon trackers. MUTOMCA experiment has a purpose to prove that the muon trackers could be used as efficient Non Destructive Assay safeguards technique for reverification of DPC.