Nondestructive evaluation and assay of nuclear waste drums with high energy transmission and emission computed tomography

Technical Report · Sat Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1994

OSTI ID:111588

Bernardi, R T; Han, K S ^[1]

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1. Bio-Imaging Research, Inc., Lincolnshire, IL (United States)

Combined nondestructive evaluation (NDE) and nondestructive assay (NDA) of nuclear waste drums can fuse data from tow or more inspection techniques to identify and locate gamma-ray emissions within the drums. The NDE techniques used are x-ray computed tomography (CT) and digital radiography (DR); NDA methods are single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and energy-sensitive nuclear spectroscopy. Data collected using CT, DR, and SPECT can be fused and displayed with a computer imaging system to locate and identify emitting radioactive sources within a drum, as well as the material shielding the emission. With the addition of nuclear spectroscopy, it is also possible to determine the radioactive species and the activity level of the radiation emission outside the drum. The source strength within the drum can be calculated based on corrections derived from three-dimensional CT density data of the drum.

• Research Organization: Arizona Univ., Tucson, AZ (United States). Coll. of Engineering and Mines; New Mexico State Univ., University Park, NM (United States); Waste-Management Education and Research Consortium (WERC), Las Cruces, NM (United States); USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
• OSTI ID: 111588
• Report Number(s): CONF-940225--Vol.3
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

05 NUCLEAR FUELS
66 PHYSICS
ACTIVITY LEVELS
EMISSION COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY
GAMMA RADIATION
GAMMA RADIOGRAPHY
IMAGES
INSPECTION
PHOTON EMISSION
RADIOACTIVE WASTES
SHIELDING