Performance evaluation of the ORNL multi-elemental XRF analysis algorithms
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Hybrid K-Edge Densitometer (HKED) systems integrate both K-Edge Densitometry (KED) and X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) analyses to provide accurate rapid, assay results of the uranium and plutonium content of dissolver solution samples from nuclear fuel reprocessing facilities. Introduced for international safeguards applications in the late 1980s, the XRF component of the hybrid analyses is limited to quantification of U and Pu over a narrow range of U:Pu concentration ratios in the vicinity of ≈100. The analysis was further limited regarding the presence of minor actinide components where only a single minor actinide (typically Am) is included in the analysis and then only treated as an interference. The evolving nuclear fuel cycle has created the need to assay more complex dissolver solutions where uranium may no longer be the dominant actinide in the solution and the concentrations of the so called minor actinides (e.g., Th, Np, Am, and Cm) are sufficiently high that they can no longer be treated as impurities and ignored. Extension of the traditional HKED Region of Interest (ROI) based analysis to include these additional actinides is not possible due to the increased complexity of the XRF spectra. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has developed a spectral fitting approach to the HKED XRF measurement with an enhanced algorithm set to accommodate these complex XRF spectra. This report provides a summary of the spectral fitting methodology and examines the performance of these algorithms using data obtained from the ORNL HKED system, as well as data provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on actual dissolver solutions.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-00OR22725
- OSTI ID:
- 1394143
- Report Number(s):
- ORNL/TM-2016/594
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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