Testing the Ortec's Isotopic and Eberlines Snap software for Uranium waste measurements
- Pil-Neyo
- Tien K.
Uranium enrichment plants normally generate lots of wastes. The wastes are in various matrices such as clothing, glass, concrete, aluminum, and steel, etc. They are in the quantity of a few grams to many kilograms and generally stored in 55-gallon drums. For accountability, it is important to determine the amount of uranium in the waste drums to a certain level of accuracy. There are several commercially available systems that can accurately determine the uranium mass in the waste drums, such as Tomographic-Gamma-Scanner1 (TGS) or Segmented Gamma-Ray Scanner2 (SGS). However, those systems are too cumbersome and expensive. Cheap and simple single detector systems are also available commercially from several companies. The workhorse of these systems is the software, which would work with any germanium detector system. We mocked up waste drums containing several hundred grams to several kilograms of uranium with different isotopic compositions in various matrices. We acquired data using a coaxial germanium detector. We tested two different software codes from two companies, the Ortec's Isotopic software and the Eberline's Snap software. The results with the germanium detector were very encouraging, which led us to test with the NaI detectors. The NaI detectors have much worse resolution than the germanium detectors. However, they are very cheap, can be very large in detector size and, thus, efficient for a given counting time, and are simpler because of not requiring liquid nitrogen for cooling. The results, advantages, and disadvantages of the two software codes and the two detector systems will be discussed.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- OSTI ID:
- 976636
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-03-2940; TRN: US1006504
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: "Submitted to: 25th Annual Symposium on Safeguards and Nuclear Material management, "Norra Latin" Sweden, May 13-15, 2003"
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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