Enhancements to the Unattended Dual Current Monitor (UDCM) and Unattended Multiplicity Shift Register (UMSR) prior to Commercialization

摘要

The Internationa! Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) tested the latest safeguards instruments developed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for both attended and unattended neutron and gamma ray measurements. These instruments are the Unattended Multiplicity Shift Register (UMSR) and the Unattended Dual Current Monitor (UDCM). The IAEA tests led to recommendations for enhancements to these technologies prior to commercialization. These enhancements included increased measurement sensitivity down to tens of femto-amperes and an increased measurement range to fully encompass the range covered by existing safeguards instruments. Along with performance improvements, LANL modified the instruments to improve robustness. Dual data storage was added with the addition of a second microSD card. A backup operating system (OS) is stored on the auxiliary microSD card and the instruments automatically detect problems with the main OS and boot to the secondary OS if needed. Additional enhancements, testing and preliminary applications for both the UDCM and the UMSR will be discussed in this paper.