Nuclear detectionWorking Toward a More Secure World
Neutron resonance transmission analysis (NRTA), which is used for identifying specific kinds of special nuclear materials. Elements come in different forms, or isotopes, and one way to differentiate among isotopes is to bombard them with neutrons. A reliable method for pinning down the nature of nuclear materials is crucial in nuclear security, where verification of weapons treaties may depend on establishing if a warhead slated for elimination is real or fake. The same kind of technology is useful for determining the enrichment status of nuclear fuel, or for revealing the presence of concealed radioactive material.
Well before arriving on campus, Peninah (Nina) Levine knew what she wanted from her undergraduate education:
“I came to MIT to be in an environment that would push me beyond my comfortable limits,” says Levine, a senior majoring in nuclear science and engineering (NSE). “I had to find where my passions lay and forge my own path.”
Today, Levine is well along that path, engaged in a five-year combined undergraduate and master’s program and helping develop technologies for characterizing nuclear material — tools to aid in nuclear weapons verification or to prevent illicit trafficking of nuclear material. Her research is based in the Laboratory for Applied Nuclear Physics, directed by Associate Professor Areg Danagoulian.
“I was looking for a research opportunity with tangible applications, and that’s what I found at the lab,” she says. “The work we’re doing has clear implications for making the world safer.”
Better Detectors
Levine is focused on a process called neutron resonance transmission analysis (NRTA), which is used for identifying specific kinds of special nuclear materials. Elements come in different forms, or isotopes, and one way to differentiate among isotopes is to bombard them with neutrons.
“Passing a neutron beam through a target material and detecting what comes out the other side — what the target does and does not absorb — enables us to analyze and precisely determine isotopic composition,” says Levine.
This highly reliable method for pinning down the nature of nuclear materials is crucial in nuclear security, where verification of weapons treaties may depend on establishing if a warhead slated for elimination is real or fake. The same kind of technology is useful for determining the enrichment status of nuclear fuel, or for revealing the presence of concealed radioactive material.
But current NRTA “remains widely inaccessible, because it typically uses high-intensity neutron beams at large, expensive facilities,” explains Levine. So, Danagoulian’s lab is developing alternatives “for making NRTA much smaller and cheaper,” she says.
In spring 2020, Levine jumped into her part of the project: devising simulations of three different methods for generating neutron beams that might satisfy the requirements for an optimized version of NRTA. Getting these models right means avoiding costly mistakes at the experimental stage.
