摘要
The first accelerator based X-ray facility dedicated to freight control, in this case air-freight pallets, became operational at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport in 1991. Since then, five other facilities have been built, three in Europe and the other two in China, for the control of trucks and sea-containers. In order to be able to see through these very large and dense objects, X-ray energies of several MeV are necessary. Two types of electron accelerators are used for the production of the X-ray beams: linear accelerators and electrostatic accelerators (Van de Graff or Pelletrons), depending on the beam quality requirements which depend on the technology used for the detection of X-rays. A brief description of the functioning of the X-ray inspection facilities is presented in this article as well as an estimation of their global cost and of their profitability.