40 out of the 80 radionuclide stations of the CTBT International Monitoring System (IMS) will be equipped with Noble Gas detection systems. As of February 2020, 31 of these stations are installed, with 25 of them certified. Noble Gas detection system technology for the CTBT regime founded its basis with the International Noble Gas Experiment (INGE) 20 years ago. The IMS division, in conjunction with member states and Noble Gas system vendors, works for the development and acceptance of the next generation Noble Gas systems. These new systems are designed to improve significantly time resolution and even increasing system sensitivity (Minimum Detection Concentration) as well as energy resolution where new detector technologies are used. The next generation systems undergo a technical acceptance process which includes, beside other compliance checks, a year of continuous operation in typical IMS conditions and continuous data processing and review by the International Data Centre (IDC). Each system has specific design features that improve on current operational systems, which require customized software solutions to process resulting spectral data. In order to ensure smooth integration of NG-NG systems, the IDC initiated a new unified software development project for timely deployment into the production environment. This paper describes in details the CTBTO acceptance process of these new technologies and the Noble Gas systems qualification for potential use in the IMS network.
Year
2020
Abstract