Open AccessDETERMINATION OF THE 234U ISOTOPE CONTENT IN URANIUM-BEARING MATERIALS USING HIGH-RESOLUTION GAMMA SPECTROMETRY
Author(s) -
D.V. Kutniy,
D.D. Burdeinyi,
N.N. Savchenko
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
problems of atomic science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1562-6016
pISSN - 1682-9344
DOI - 10.46813/2021-133-081
Subject(s) - uranium , calibration , certified reference materials , detector , nuclear material , mass spectrometry , materials science , enriched uranium , analytical chemistry (journal) , nuclear engineering , range (aeronautics) , depleted uranium , calibration curve , nuclear physics , detection limit , chemistry , physics , optics , environmental chemistry , composite material , chromatography , quantum mechanics , engineering
The paper presents an overview of the research into the available non-destructive methods of determining the 234U isotope content in uranium-bearing materials. An alternative approach to a problem of detector calibration by the characteristic “intrinsic” efficiency is proposed. Certified reference uranium-bearing materials CRM 969 and CRM 146 (a range of 235U enrichments studied was 0.3…93%) were used as test samples, measurements were carried out with a wide-range energy detector based on the high-purity BeGe 3830 germanium (Canberra, USA) with 38 cm2 area and 3 cm thickness. An approach used for the “intrinsic” efficiency calibration for the 234U analysis permits to decrease the measurement error to 7.5% in the whole range of 235U enrichment (from 0.3 to 93%) and 234U concentrations (20 to 9800 µg/g). The proposed method does not demand standard samples for equipment calibration and does not depend on the physical (chemical) form of the investigated material and measurement geometry.