PNNL

Abstract

Current radiographic methods are limited in their ability to determine the presence of nuclear materials in containers or composite objects. A central problem is the inability to distinguish the attenuation pattern of high-density metals from those with a larger greater thickness of a less- dense material. Here we show that spectrally sensitive detectors can be used to discriminate plutonium from multiple layers of other materials using a single-view radiograph. An inverse algorithm with adaptive regularization is used. The algorithm can determine the presence of plutonium in simulated radiographs with a mass resolution per unit area of at least 0.07 g•cm^-2.