Progress Toward Fast Decay Energy Spectroscopy for Actinide Analysis
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM (United States)
Decay energy spectroscopy (DES) is an increasingly popular technique for measuring isotopic composition of actinide samples for nuclear safeguards applications. Current approaches for actinide DES utilize milligram-scale external gold absorbers (> 0.1 nJ/K) that are integrated with actinide samples through mechanical kneading and are thermally connected to microcalorimeters using indium or gold wire bonds. This leads to relatively slow sensor rise time and, consequently, limits counting speed to a few counts per second. We are developing faster metallic magnetic calorimeter-based DES by integrating actinide samples with magnetic sensor materials. This reduces signal rise time and enables high counting speed while maintaining the ability to knead the radioactive source with the absorber. We have measured signal rise time of 0.7 μs with a 1.5 mg external gold absorber using this approach. Here, we also demonstrated online DES operation using an Ortec DSPEC 50, a commercially available data acquisition system developed for semiconductor detectors.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC52-07NA27344
- OSTI ID:
- 2446781
- Report Number(s):
- LLNL--JRNL-855959; 1084659
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Low Temperature Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Low Temperature Physics Journal Issue: 1-2 Vol. 216; ISSN 0022-2291
- Publisher:
- Springer NatureCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Absorber Clamp for Microcalorimeter Decay Energy Spectrometry
Measurement of the 240Pu/239Pu mass ratio using a transition-edge-sensor microcalorimeter for total decay energy spectroscopy