A centre for Advanced Digital Radiometric Instrumentation for Applied Nuclear Activities (ADRIANA)

与核活动有关的设施，如反应堆、放射性物质、废物和处理系统，其特点往往是它们在进行过程中所释放的辐射或残留污染。这一特征非常重要，因为由于对健康的风险，通常不可能进入这些设施，相反，如果不对它们进行特征描述，我们往往也不知道风险的程度。幸运的是，由于两种最常见的辐射形式--中子和伽马射线--具有很强的穿透性，通常可以在不侵入正在评估的设施的情况下进行必要的测量。事实上，从对这些辐射场的非侵入性、非破坏性评估中可以学到很多东西。直到最近，被接受的评估伽马射线和中子环境的技术仍然基于20世纪50年代、60年代和70年代核工业萌芽时开发的技术。这些技术虽然足够，但完全是模拟的，因此，在实验室开发的可行评估中只有一小部分可以转移到工业环境中，因为需要广泛的设置和配置，而且它们与计算机系统不直接兼容。在过去的10年里，兰开斯特大学和利物浦大学的工作重点是将这些技术数字化，这并不容易，因为辐射与探测系统相互作用的速度非常快，对于当前的电子处理系统来说往往太快了。这项研究的成功使人们能够实时地描述环境的特征，而不需要像模拟仪器那样进行广泛的设置程序，特别是产生了一些根据其辐射成像核环境的新方法。这一提议特别令人感兴趣的是，与以前的情况相比，多路复用检测器系统已经变得可行，如果这些更大、更复杂的检测器系统能够被构建成工业应用，许多新的分析技术被假设。由于这种检测器系统很昂贵，世界上几乎没有合适的类型可用，尽管它们在发电、退役、癌症治疗和计量学中具有分析的潜力。在这项提案中，我们打算建造几个这样的系统--伽马射线能谱系统、中子成像系统和伽马射线成像系统--以建立一个尖端设施组，供对这些技术感兴趣的英国研究人员使用。这将使数字辐射分析的好处应用于广泛的应用，而不需要每个研究人员试图为必要的昂贵设备提供资金，并将成为英国在这一重要领域继续领先的有效基础。

Facilities associated with nuclear activities, such as reactors, radioactive substances, wastes and processing systems can often be characterised by the radiation that they emit as a result of the processes going on with them, or residual contamination. This characterisation is very important because it is often impossible to enter such facilities due to the risk to health and, conversely, without characterising them we often do not know the extent of the risk either. Fortunately, because two of the most common forms of radiation - neutrons and gamma rays - are very penetrating, it is usually possible to carry out the necessary measurements without needing to intrude on the facilities under assessment. Indeed, a great deal can be learnt from non-intrusive, non-destructive assessments of these radiation fields.Until recently, the accepted techniques for assessing gamma-ray and neutron environments were still based on technologies developed at the dawn of the nuclear industry, in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Whilst adequate, these techniques were wholly analogue and as a result only a small proportion of the feasible assessments developed in the laboratory could be transported to industrial environments because extensive setting-up and configuration is needed, and they are not directly compatible with computer systems. Over the last 10 years, work at Lancaster and Liverpool Universities has focussed on digitizing these techniques, which is not easy because the speed with which the radiations interact with detecting systems is extremely fast, and often too fast for current electronic processing systems. The success of this research has enabled environments to be characterized in real-time and without the need for extensive set-up procedures that was the case for analogue apparatus, and in particular has resulted in a number new ways to image nuclear environments in terms of the radiation they emit. Of particular interest to this proposal is that it has become feasible to multiplex a much wider range of detector systems than was previously the case, with many new assay techniques being postulated if these larger, more sophisticated detector systems can be constructed for industrial applications.Because such detector systems are expensive, there are few if any of a suitable type available in the world despite the potential they hold for analysis in power production, decommissioning, cancer therapy and metrology. In this proposal we intend to construct several of these systems - a gamma-ray spectroscopy system, a neutron imaging system and a gamma-ray imaging system - to establish a cutting-edge group of facilities that can be used by researchers in the UK with an interest in these techniques. This will allow the benefits of digital radiation assay to be brought to bear on a wide range of applications without the need for every researcher to try to fund the expensive equipment necessary, and will be an efficient basis on which to continue Britain's lead in this important area.