On October 16, 2015, during the Consortium for Verification Technology (CVT) workshop at University of Michigan, Jack Linkous (a senior RADIANS team member and CVT graduate fellow) demonstrated a new method to image sources of neutrons from fissionable materials.
Jack’s technique for imaging fissionable material exploits the dynamics of fission chain-reactions to discriminate between spontaneous fission neutron sources and sources of neutrons from self-multiplying special nuclear material (SNM). Using the recent RADIANS experiments with SNM at the Nevada Test Site, Jack showed he could distinguish images of weapons-grade plutonium from images of californium-252.
Jack worked with Dr. Jason Newby of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Prof. John Mattingly of NCSU to develop and implement his new neutron imaging technique.