Thyratrons

Teledyne e2v is a leader in cargo scanning technology, delivering products that are integrated into 90% of major systems worldwide.
Over 90% of the worldâ€^™s non-bulk cargo is transported by ship in standardised containers. The containerisation system was developed after World War II and its cost reduction has been a major driver of international trade and globalisation. There are well over half a billion container shipments per annum.

The critical technology at the heart of cargo scanning systems 
Cargo scanning is a broad term which encompasses intelligent logistics, sniffer dogs and X-ray inspection. X-ray inspection systems offer rapid, non-invasive checking of manifests, detection of contraband, and when combined with other techniques, can be used to identify the presence of nuclear material. X-ray energies up to 10 MeV are required to penetrate fully loaded shipping containers and vehicles. These X-rays are generated through the acceleration of electrons along a linear accelerator into a target using megawatt energy microwave pulses produced by the RF sub-system.

The skills for the design, manufacture and integration of specialised components for low-cost systems reside mainly in commercial companies. There is an emerging trend for linac system companies to demand higher performance from their integrated RF sub-systems.
Currently, we intend not only to drive the innovation and development in this area, but also to offer integrated RF sub-systems to meet new requirements such as, portability, material discrimination and higher throughput.

Literature

Cargo Scanning