Possibility of hgh Z material detection by a setup for natural cosmic-ray muon flux measurement

A design is proposed and a resolving power is calculated for a detector that monitors the unauthorized transportation of high Z materials (nuclear materials with Z > 90) using the natural cosmic-ray muon flux. The identification of nuclear materials is based on the strong dependence of the multiple scattering angle on the matter charge upon traversing the matter by cosmic muons. It is proposed that chambers assembled from drift aluminum tubes similar to chambers used in the muon system of the ATLAS detector be used as the coordinate detector for the setup. The calculations show that the proposed variant of the setup makes it possible to detect the presence of nuclear materials with a weight of about 0.5–1 kg and higher in the inspected volume in a measurement time of several minutes.