Status of Neutron Imaging – Activities in a Worldwide Context

We report on the status and the visible progress in neutron imaging technology based on the installation of new facilities world-wide, on the further upgrade of existing ones and on the new aspects with respect to methods and applications. This overview is based on existing databases from the IAEA and a new questionnaire-based data collection driven by ISNR and IAEA. As a result of our analysis, 50 facilities can be categorized into either “user facility”, “in-house usage”, “under installation” or “project”. The potential for further increase of the number of facilities is seen in countries with underutilized research reactors with powers above 1 MW, mostly in Eastern Europe or other developing countries. As well, the future trends of advanced methods in neutron imaging and their development in a few laboratories world-wide are described. A permanent exchange of knowledge and experience among the involved experts has been organized by the workshop series NEUWAVE since 2008,on about a yearly basis.