Monte Carlo Modeling of Photon Interrogation Methods for Characterization of Special Nuclear Material
- ORNL
- Nuclear Engineering Department Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy
This work illustrates a methodology based on photon interrogation and coincidence counting for determining the characteristics of fissile material. The feasibility of the proposed methods was demonstrated using a Monte Carlo code system to simulate the full statistics of the neutron and photon field generated by the photon interrogation of fissile and non-fissile materials. Time correlation functions between detectors were simulated for photon beam-on and photon beam-off operation. In the latter case, the correlation signal is obtained via delayed neutrons from photofission, which induce further fission chains in the nuclear material. An analysis methodology was demonstrated based on features selected from the simulated correlation functions and on the use of artificial neural networks. We show that the methodology can reliably differentiate between highly enriched uranium and plutonium. Furthermore, the mass of the material can be determined with a relative error of about 12%. Keywords: MCNP, MCNP-PoliMi, Artificial neural network, Correlation measurement, Photofission
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC05-00OR22725
- OSTI ID:
- 966077
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: PHYSOR, Vancouver, Canada, 20060910, 20060914
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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