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Design and fabrication of the uranium drum standards

Book ·
OSTI ID:61445
; ; ;  [1]
  1. Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States)
The segmented gamma scanner has become an important instrument for assaying the special nuclear material content of low-density scrap and waste in 55-gal. drums. To perform these assays accurately, one needs appropriate standards to calibrate the response of the system including the detector efficiency, the absorber in front of the detector, and the collimator geometry. A set of three uranium drum standards has been fabricated at Los Alamos. This paper discusses a Monte Carlo calculation to optimize the design of the drum standards. The drum standards are prepared using 20 modular 4-liter bottles in each drum. This paper also describes the fabrication procedure, which includes weighing the uranium oxide and the chemical analyzing of the uranium concentration. Also presented is the vertical scanning data of the 4-liter bottles to assure uniform mixing of the uranium and the diluent. Finally, the nondestructive measurements for checking consistency among the three drum standards are discussed.
OSTI ID:
61445
Report Number(s):
CONF-930749--
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English