Experimental validation of MCNP simulations for the EURITRACK Tagged Neutron Inspection System

The detection of illicit trafficking such as explosive materials inside large commercial payloads is today an important worldwide problem. Differently from the X- or γ-ray based systems, neutron interrogation allows the elemental composition of inspected materials to be measured. A container interrogation device based on the Tagged Neutron Inspection System (TNIS) has been developed within the EURITRACK (EURopean Illicit TRAfficking Countermeasures Kit) project of the 6th Framework Program of the European Union. A prototype of such system has been integrated at the Ruder Boskovic Institute (IRB) of Zagreb, Croatia, and performance tests have been carried out. A detailed simulation of the IRB experimental set-up has been performed. Comparison of the Monte Carlo predictions with collected experimental data is presented.