Prof. Pozzi’s group is interested in developing new tools and techniques for the detection and characterization of special nuclear material: highly enriched uranium and weapons grade plutonium. Their research has applications in the areas of nuclear safeguards, nuclear nonproliferation, and homeland security.
The performance assessment of existing techniques – and the development of new, more advanced ones – rely on accurate simulation of realistic threat scenarios. The analysis of non-threat scenarios is also crucial to correctly evaluate the detection probability and to minimize the occurrence of false positive alarms. Pozzi’s group develops Monte Carlo codes and analytical methods to investigate the physics of the fission and detection processes. We also perform experiments to improve and validate these models.
Imaging a radioactive neutron source to determine source location: simulation and measurement shown