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Portfolio News and Multimedia

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LLNL-led Project to Advance Muon-Based Imaging in DARPA-Funded Initiative

Today we can see inside seemingly impossible places thanks to muon imaging. This technique uses muons, which can penetrate far deeper than possible with x rays.  But this process is also slow. Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) are working to change that with a new initiative called Intense and Compact Muon Sources for Science and Security (ICMuS2).

Partnering with industry and academic researchers, the initiative seeks to rapidly generate these particles using high power lasers. The project is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Muons for Science and Security Program.

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Lab instrument now on two-billion-mile journey to the metallic asteroid Psyche

An instrument designed and built by LLNL researchers departed Earth last week on a two-billion-mile, nearly six-year journey through space to explore a rare, largely metal asteroid.

The Livermore high-purity germanium (HPGe) gamma-ray sensor is an essential part of a larger gamma-ray spectrometer (GRS) built in collaboration with researchers from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (JHAPL) in Laurel, Maryland. It is part of a suite of instruments set to make the first-ever visit to Psyche, the largest metal asteroid in the solar system. The Psyche mission is led by Arizona State University (ASU).

RaFTS: Radiation Field Training Simulator

Training realistically to respond to the threat of radiological terrorism is a real problem. Using actual radiological materials to train federal, state, and local agencies who detect and respond to these threats is extremely expensive, adds risk, and can’t replicate many of the scenarios of concern. LLNL’s Radiation Field Training Simulator (RaFTS) is a programmable device that injects realistic radiation source signals into suitably adapted operational radiation detection and identification devices (spectrometers). RaFTS enables highly realistic scenarios to simulate truly hazardous situations but without the need, expense or risks of using actual radiological material. In 2020, RaFTS was licensed by Argon Electronics Ltd (UK) to add significant capability to their line of CBRN hazard simulators.

Radiation Detection Technologies

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Natalia Zaitseva examines a single crystal growing in a solution-growth crystallizer developed for production of stilbene crystals for fast neutron detection

LLNL has identified solution-grown organic crystals having scintillation efficiency not only close to, but even exceeding that of stilbene.. LLNL's invention relates to a new class of neutron detectors based on scintillation response of organic single crystals. More specifically, the use of organic molecules grown from solution and to molecules including the basic benzene or phenyl structure…