Construction, commissioning and first data from the CRIPT muon tomography project

The Cosmic Ray Inspection and Passive Tomography (CRIPT) project is investigating muon scattering tomography (MST) for applications in border security, nuclear non-proliferation, and nuclear waste characterization. The construction of the full-scale prototype MST system began in the Summer of 2011 and was completed in September 2012. The CRIPT detector employs 12 layers of scintillator to track atmospheric muons before and after passage through a volume of interest, and to estimate each muon's momentum. The total height of the system is 5.5 m and its weight is 20 tonnes. Details of its construction are presented. After the integration of the custom data acquisition electronics, the commissioning of the CRIPT detector began. The first tomographic images were obtained in October 2012 and are presented here.