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This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under agreement No 883424


Bertin Technologies and CEA List have been collaborating for many years, especially on applications dedicated to the detection of gamma and neutron radiation sources in vehicles, primarily being transported illegally.   

Within the framework of the ENTRANCE project, the team is developing and integrating new algorithms to improve the performance of detection gantries at border crossing points. As the technology will be deployed in re-locatable Radiation Portal Monitors (RPMs), the extent of their applications has significant potential impact across many scenarios.

“The objective is to increase the passage speed of vehicles while guaranteeing the detection of radiation. The increase from 8 to 30 km/h would make it possible to install these gantries at the level of electronic toll barriers,” explains Gwenolé Corre, Physicist at CEA.

To achieve this objective, three linear RPM detectors are used, which measure and correlate the gamma radiation measurements as a vehicle drives past them and immediately alert customs’ staff to the risks, who can then take stop the vehicles and take appropriate action.

“The team working on the SAPHIR platform of CEA List has solid experience in photofission that has been built up over nearly 30 years” added Adrien Sari, Research Engineer at CEA. “As part of the ENTRANCE project, we are deploying this technique to verify if any nuclear material, uranium or plutonium for example, is hidden in a container. And in collaboration with our partner Smiths Detection, we aim to couple this technique with a mobile X-ray device, which would be a world first.”

Initial tests at CEA Saclay France and in November 2022 at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy were successful and radiation from genuine sources was indeed measured by the ENTRANCE technology at 30 km/h. The final field trials of the technology will be conducted in Spring 2023 in Croatia and Bulgarian, in conjunction with the Croatian and Bulgarian customs’ authorities. These and all the results of the ENTRANCE project will be announced at the project’s final conference in Autumn 2023.

This video is in French with English subtitles. © CEA

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Optimization of the ENTRANCE Rapidly Relocatable Tagged Neutron Inspection System

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ENTRANCE General information

 

Most of the organisations and individuals in ENTRANCE have already collaborated through previous successful EU funded projects such as C-BORD, CORE, EUROSKY and are re-uniting their capabilities to build the value chain of NII for effective border controls.

Read more about the ENTRANCE partners