MUON TOMOGRAPHY SYSTEMS, SL, beneficiary company of the Ports 4.0 grants, performs the final demonstration of the MUON CARGO project.

The company MUON TOMOGRAPHY SYSTEMS, SL, responsible for the project “Muon Cargo. Non-invasive inspection of goods in maritime transport using muon tomography”, has carried out the final demonstration of the result of the project at the company’s facilities, located in Santander. The project has counted with the collaboration of the Port Authority of Santander as facilitating agent.

The MUON CARGO project was a beneficiary of the 1st call for pre-commercial projects of Ports 4.0, an initiative of Puertos del Estado.

The objective of the project is to provide goods traffic control with a rapid, innocuous and non-invasive container inspection device for the detection of threats, trafficking of illegal goods and people hidden inside containers.

Muon tomography uses radiation with a very high penetrating power in matter, which is absolutely innocuous and harmless both for the working personnel and operators and for the load. When a muon passes through an object, its energy and trajectory are modified according to the nature (density, composition and geometry) of that object. This phenomenon is known as “Multiple Scattering” and is due to the electrical interactions that muons undergo with the nuclei of matter. Muon tomography aims to measure these path deviations by placing muon detectors upstream and downstream of the object under study. The measured deviations can be used through a reconstruction algorithm to obtain a density map of the object, including its interior.

The implementation of this technology in the port environment could reduce the number of manual inspections, increase the number of containers scanned and improve security within the port logistics chain.