Artificial Intelligence Detection System of Radioactive Nanocomposites in Liquid-Filled Containers for Nuclear Security

Abstract

Nuclear terrorism resulting from the illicit trafficking of nuclear and radioactive materials consists of a serious threat against the security of countries. Hence, the transportation of hidden nuclear materials in large-scale cargos has emerged as an important public issue that requires immediate attention. The security architecture should merge the nuclear security systems and execute a procedure for the detection of nuclear and radioactive materials. In this regard, the detection of special nuclear materials (SNMs) in liquid-filled cargo containers is an essential matter of homeland security because of the difficulties imposed by liquids in performing efficient manual inspection. This paper presents a new artificial intelligence (AI) system implemented with fuzzy logic tools for detecting composite materials, including Pb-Th, Pb-U, and Pb-Co, in containers filled with water by utilizing optical signature information obtained with COMSOL. The developed AI system and its underlying method are validated for a scenario of detecting Pb-Th, Pb-U, and Pb-Co in water-filled containers.

Keywords:

• Artificial intelligence
• fuzzy logic
• water-filled containers
• nuclear security
• nanomaterials

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This material is based on work performed under the auspices of the Consortium on Nuclear Security Technologies supported by the U.S. Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration under award number DE-NA0003948.