The Eritr@C project address the problem of the cargo container inspection in seaports. The importance of this task is well known since 95% of the world’s cargo moves by ship. That translates into over 200 million cargo containers moving between major seaports around the world each year. It is estimated that less than 10% of all containers are checked to verify that transported goods correspond to the declared content. Illicit trafficking of threat materials and frauds represent a severe problem for the security and the economy of EU.

As far as the current cargo inspections, the first level of investigation is the risk analysis for each container. The inspection by using X-ray scanners represents the second inspection level for the container. Standard X-ray systems provide limited information even when extended to the higher energies needed to penetrate fully loaded cargo containers: they can only give an idea of the shape and of the density of the objects but cannot fully characterize the chemical elements present inside the container. Several threat materials such as explosives have indeed density very close to benign items and can be prepared in any shape. This implies that when the X-ray image does not clear a suspect container, custom officers might decide to perform a physical inspection of the cargo by opening the container and unloading the transported goods. Such procedure implies delays in the flow of the goods and operational costs for the customs.

Recently, non-destructive analysis (NDA) based on fast neutron beams has been proposed to deduce information about elemental composition of the scanned material and identify the transported goods. Such technology has been developed in Europe within the EURITRACK project (IST-FP6) and is now ready to be transferred to the custom authorities to be used as an additional, third line of screening. This technology transfer is the subject of the Erit@C project.