

Stealing Used Nuclear Fuel Is About to Get Harder - DiabloD3
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/stealing-used-nuclear-fuel-is-about-to-get-harder

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sandworm
It will take months, years, decades to scan each cask. They are basically
doing a cat scan of a large object using natural muons, cosmic rays.

There aren't very many rays at the earth's surface. A cat scan will use
millions, billions of particles to form an image. The flux of cosmic rays for
this scanning method will be on the order of one or two rays per liter of
object per second. Building up any image will, at that rate, take a loooong
time.

These nuclear casks are probably the only targets willing stand still long
enough. Scanning something small, like a lead safe, might take literally
centuries.

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dmm
The Wikipedia page for muon topography describes an experiment from 2011 where
a reactor mockup was scanned in three weeks. That's a long time but seemingly
reasonable for this application.

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3JPLW
Strange lede for a cool technology. I suppose it is how they managed to get
funding, but the other uses are much more interesting. There's a lot more
detail in the linked article about imaging Fukushima Daiichi:
[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/scientists-are-using-
cosmic...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/scientists-are-using-cosmic-
radiation-to-peer-inside-fukushimas-mangled-reactor)

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malandrew
Why don't they just booby-trap the whole place so that the attack vector
involving heavy explosives is an exercise in suicide.

