Abstract

Muons are fundamental, charged particles that form part of our naturally-occurring background radiation. They are produced in particle showers in the upper atmosphere from the impact of cosmic rays. These muons are incident at sea-level at a rate of about one per square centimetre per minute and with average energies of about 3 GeV—approximately four orders of magnitude more than typical X-rays. Muons are highly penetrating and can traverse hundreds of metres of rock, which has opened up the possibility to use them for challenging imaging applications.

Muography is an established technique in volcanology, it has been used to find a cavity in the pyramid of Khufu in Egypt and over the last years a wide variety of applications have been explored—ranging from cargo screening to nuclear waste characterisation and carbon storage monitoring.

Lynkeos Technology is a spin-out company from the University of Glasgow, founded in 2016 following a 7-year, £4.8M research programme funded by the NDA . The Lynkeos Muon Imaging System is the worldwide first, CE-marked muon imaging system for the characterization of nuclear waste containers. It has been successfully deployed on the Sellafield site in October 2018.

This talk will give an overview of muography applications worldwide and present the activities of Lynkeos Technology in detail, with a focus on the characterization of nuclear waste containers.