Muons – elementary particles produced via high-energy cosmic ray showers in the atmosphere – make up much of the cosmic radiation that reaches the Earth’s surface. At sea level, every square metre receives some 100 muons per second, and the muons’ high energies mean that they pass easily through material that would stop some other particles, such as electrons.

For physicist Ralf Kaiser, these heavy-hitting particles sparked the idea for an imaging innovation. In 2016 he founded Lynkeos Technology, a start-up that develops 3D-imaging systems that use muons to “see” inside complex, shielded structures, such as drums containing nuclear waste. I visited Ralf Kaiser and his colleague David Mahon in their Glasgow lab to learn more about how they set up their company.

What was your career like before you started Lynkeos?

Ralf Kaiser: I did a PhD in particle physics at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and after that I went to the DESY-Zeuthen laboratory, near Berlin, Germany, for my postdoc. I’d been a postdoc for three and a half years and was starting to consider a move into something else when I got an appointment as a lecturer at the University of Glasgow, UK. I did basic nuclear physics research for many years, working on accelerator-based experiments and designing and constructing new detectors.

Then, in 2010 I got the opportunity to work at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria. It started out as a sabbatical, but I ended up spending seven years there as head of physics, doing things like flying drones over Fukushima, Japan, and getting involved in science politics and representing the IAEA on international councils such as the ones that oversee the ITER fusion reactor and the SESAME synchrotron. This entirely changed my view of what science and technology can do. At the IAEA, the centre of attention is on the impact that science has on our lives, rather than the knowledge you gain from it. I’m now particularly interested in doing things that solve problems and improve people’s lives, and our product at Lynkeos definitely falls into this category.

How did Lynkeos get started?

RK: It began in 2009 as a research project with support from the University of Glasgow, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and the National Nuclear Laboratory. Having conducted a feasibility study, and a Monte Carlo simulation, which showed that, in principle, we could do something useful with muon imaging, we got funding to build first a small-scale prototype and then a full-scale one. That was a seven-year, £4.8m research programme funded by the NDA, and at the end of it we had a system that worked on full-sized drums of intermediate-level waste.

Then, in the aftermath of a reorganization at Sellafield, our funding was cut, and instead of supporting us directly, the NDA offered us the intellectual property rights to those seven years of research if we started a company to commercialize our technology. Starting a company was something we’d planned to do at some point. My colleague David Mahon, who worked with me closely on the research project and is now a director at Lynkeos, had received business training as part of a Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) Enterprise Fellowship, and I did a diploma course for non-executive directors run by the Financial Times newspaper. We weren’t completely unprepared, so losing our funding, which at first looked pretty negative, actually turned out well.

Can you say more about your training?

David Mahon: I did my PhD at Glasgow with Ralf as my supervisor, and I worked on the software side of the project, developing imaging algorithms. During the RSE fellowship, I was placed in a cohort with 10 other people from different areas – life sciences, biomedical engineering, and so on – who were all trying to commercialize their research. We were put in touch with mentors and met up once a month for a few days’ training in everything from how to set up a company to how to make investment decisions. It was an invaluable year, and it gave me a crash course in business.

RK: At the IAEA I looked into an MBA, but a friend who had done this Financial Times diploma suggested it might fit better in my schedule. I learned about company structure, corporate governance, and rules and regulations. I also had to take an undergraduate-level accounting course with a three-hour written exam – the first I’d done in 20 years. I passed with a B–.

Tell me more about your imaging technology.

RK: We use muons to image the contents of drums containing intermediate-level radioactive waste encapsulated in concrete. Reactor sites such as Sellafield in the UK have large numbers of these “legacy” waste drums that were filled with the cladding of fuel elements maybe 40 or 50 years ago, and sometimes a piece of uranium fuel broke off and ended up in the concrete as well. Uranium oxide takes up about twice the volume of uranium, so when these pieces of fuel corrode, they expand, and pressure builds up inside the drums. Eventually you get enough pressure that the steel drum bulges, and then it’s a question of when, not if, the drum will burst open – particularly if you’re storing them for long periods.

If you put one of these drums into our system, we can detect whether it contains a piece of fuel, locate the fuel accurately in three dimensions and image it even through a metre of concrete – too thick for conventional imaging tools such as X-rays or ultrasound. When you’re managing waste, it makes a big difference if you have the technology to look inside your storage units, and muons are also completely natural – you get them free, as part of the background, so there’s no additional radiation. You don’t need a permit to operate our system any more than you need a permit to operate a toaster.

You don’t need a permit to operate our system any more than you need a permit to operate a toaster

What’s next for Lynkeos?

RK: We installed our first commercial system at Sellafield in 2018, so the next step is to sell our product to nuclear facilities elsewhere in the UK and in other countries such as Germany or France. We’ve also started developing a mobile version for civil engineering applications.

DM: At the moment, if you want to use our system to image an object, that object needs to be small enough to fit inside our detector. But we’d like to extend this by designing a system we can take to the point of inspection, so that we can look inside bridges, buildings and other large-scale structures that can’t be imaged using conventional techniques.

What do you know now that you wish you’d known when you started?

RK: The biggest technical challenge we faced was to get our system certified as a commercial product. We started off developing a research system, so we didn’t necessarily select materials and processes that would be compliant with CE [European health, safety and environmental protection] certification. We should have thought about that earlier.

Any other advice for someone who’s thinking of commercializing their research?

RK: The first thing to realize is that this is actually a viable option. A lot of things only become viable options when you see them. When I went from the university to the IAEA I saw a whole different aspect of the world, and it was an eye-opener for me. I now look at many things, including some political things, differently – and, I think, with more information and a better understanding.

DM: There are organizations out there that are actively trying to help new start-ups. In addition to the RSE, Scottish Enterprise, Innovate UK and Business Gateway have been great for us in providing support and training. If you have an idea, there are people who will help you turn it into reality.

Ralf Kaiser is the founder and chief executive officer of Lynkeos Technology, and also a physicist at the University of Glasgow, UK, e-mail ralf.kaiser@lynkeos.co.uk. David Mahon is an STFC RCUK Innovation Fellow at Glasgow and a director at Lynkeos, e-mail david.mahon@glasgow.ac.uk.