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[en] This report presents the results of measurements and simulations performed with 12 small plastic scintillation detectors manufactured by Scionix for imaging applications. The scintillator is equivalent to a Bicron BC-420 plastic scintillator. A gamma calibration is presented to determine the voltage to be applied on each detector to ensure uniform detector operation. Time of flight measurements performed with a Cf-252 source are also presented. Comparisons between experimental data and data from the Monte Carlo simulations show good agreement for time lags of 0 to 70 ns

[en] Nuclear safeguards active measurements that rely on the time correlation between fast neutrons and gamma rays from the same fission are a promising technique. Previous studies have shown the feasibility of this method, in conjunction with the use of artificial neural networks, to estimate the mass and enrichment of fissile samples enclosed in special, sealed containers. This paper evaluates the use of the associated particle sealed tube neutron generator (APSTNG) as the interrogation source in correlation measurements. The results show that its use is of particular importance when floor reflections are present. The Nuclear Materials Identification System (NMIS) presently uses ²⁵²Cf ionization chambers as interrogation sources for the time-dependent coincidence measurements. Because triggers from this source are associated with neutrons emitted in any direction, adjacent materials such as the floor and nearby containers could affect the measurements and should be accounted for. Conversely, the APSTNG, together with an alpha particle detector, defines a cone of neutrons that can be aimed at the item under verification, thus removing the effects of nearby materials from the time-dependent coincidence distributions. Monte Carlo calculations were performed using MCNP-POLIMI, a modified version of the standard MCNP code. The code attempts to calculate more correctly quantities that depend on the second moment of the neutron and gamma distributions. The simulations quantified the sensitivity enhancements and removal of the effects of nearby materials by substituting the traditional ²⁵²Cf source with the APSTNG

[en] Nuclear materials safeguard efforts necessitate the use of non-destructive methods to determine the attributes of fissile samples enclosed in special, non-accessible containers. To this end, a large variety of methods has been developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and elsewhere. Usually, a given set of statistics of the stochastic neutron-photon coupled field, such as source-detector, detector-detector cross correlation functions, and multiplicities are measured over a range of known samples to develop calibration algorithms. In this manner, the attributes of unknown samples can be inferred by the use of the calibration results. The organization of this paper is as follows: Section 2 describes the Monte Carlo simulations of source-detector cross correlation functions for a set of uranium metallic samples interrogated by the neutrons and photons from a ²⁵²Cf source. From this database, a set of features is extracted in Section 3. The use of neural networks (NN) and genertic programming to provide sample mass and enrichment values from the input sets of features is illustrated in Sections 4 and 5, respectivelyl. Section 6 is a comparison of the results, while Section 7 is a brief summary of the work

[en] In the past, passive Nuclear Materials Identification System (NMIS) measurements on plutonium metal shells at VNIIEF have shown the sensitivity of the acquired covariance functions to shell mass and thickness for a variety of shell thicknesses from 6 to 30 mm and masses varying from 1829 to 4468g. The technique acquires the time-dependent coincidence distribution between plastic scintillators detecting radiation from the Pu. The measurements showed the sensitivity of the acquired signature to the different spontaneous emission, attenuation, and multiplication properties of the shells. In this work, the MCNP-POLIMI neutron and photon transport code was used to simulate passive measurements on plutonium metal and oxide. The code is a modified version of MCNP, which attempts to calculate more correctly quantities that depend on the second moment of the neutron and gamma distributions, and attempts to model detector pulses as closely as possible. MCNP-POLIMI, together with a post-processing code, can simulate all the time-dependent coincidence distributions measured by NMIS. In particular, the simulations evaluate the time-dependent coincidence distributions between detectors for plutonium samples having mass 2 and 4 kg, in metal and oxide form. This work shows that the time-dependent coincidence distributions between two scintillators measured by NMIS can be used to distinguish metal from oxide

[en] Nuclear safeguards active measurements that rely on the time correlation between fast neutrons and gamma rays from the same fission are a promising technique. Previous studies have shown the feasibility of this method, in conjunction with the use of artificial neural networks, to estimate the mass and enrichment of fissile samples enclosed in special, sealed containers. This paper evaluates the use of the associated particle sealed tube neutron generator (APSTNG) as the interrogation source in correlation measurements. The results show that its use is of particular importance when floor reflections are present. The Nuclear Materials Identification System (NMIS) presently uses(sup 252)Cf ionization chambers as interrogation sources for the time-dependent coincidence measurements. Because triggers from this source are associated with neutrons emitted in any direction, adjacent materials such as the floor and nearby containers could affect the measurements and should be accounted for. Conversely, the APSTNG, together with an alpha particle detector, defines a cone of neutrons that can be aimed at the item under verification, thus removing the effects of nearby materials from the time-dependent coincidence distributions. Monte Carlo calculations were performed using MCNP-POLIMI, a modified version of the standard MCNP code. The code attempts to calculate more correctly quantities that depend on the second moment of the neutron and gamma distributions. The simulations quantified the sensitivity enhancements and removal of the effects of nearby materials by substituting the traditional(sup 252)Cf source with the APSTNG

[en] Purpose: To develop an instrument for measuring neutron and photon dose rates from mixed fields with a single device. Methods: Stilbene organic scintillators can be used to detect fast neutrons and photons. Stilbene was used to measure emission from mixed particle sources californium-252 (Cf-252) and plutonium-beryllium (PuBe). Many source detector configurations were used, along with varying amounts of shielding. Collected spectra were analyzed using pulse shape discrimination software, to separate neutron and photon interactions. With a measured light output to energy relationship the pulse height spectrum was converted to energy deposited in the detector. Energy deposited was converted to dose with a variety of standard dose factors, for comparison to current methods. For validation, all measurements and processing was repeated using an EJ-309 liquid scintillator detector. Dose rates were also measured in the same configuration with commercially available dose meters for further validation. Results: Measurements of dose rates will show agreement across all methods. Higher accuracy of pulse shape discrimination at lower energies with stilbene leads to more accurate measurement of neutron and photon deposited dose. In strong fields of mixed particles discrimination can be performed well at a very low energy threshold. This shows accurate dose measurements over a large range of incident particle energy. Conclusion: Stilbene shows promise as a material for dose rate measurements due to its strong ability for separating neutrons and photon pulses and agreement with current methods. A dual particle dose meter would simplify methods which are currently limited to the measurement of only one particle type. Future work will investigate the use of a silicon photomultiplier to reduce the size and required voltage of the assembly, for practical use as a handheld survey meter, room monitor, or phantom installation. Funding From the United States Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration

[en] Fast and accurate identification of neutron sources is very important in nuclear nonproliferation and international safeguards applications. Commonly, the identification of neutron spectra relies on unfolding procedures, which requires the solution of an ill-posed problem. In this paper, we present a new application of an existing technique, which can be used for neutron source identification without employing energy-spectrum unfolding techniques. This technique is based on the acquisition of measured neutron pulse-height spectra by using a liquid scintillation detector BC-501A and a fast waveform digitizer TDS-5104. The technique employs an optimized digital pulse-shape discrimination method based on the standard charge integration method to discriminate neutrons from gamma rays. The accuracy of the neutron-source identification method was tested on three neutron sources: californium-252 (Cf-252), americium-beryllium (Am-Be), and americium-lithium (Am-Li). Several source-shielding configurations were investigated to assess the influence of potential shielding of the source on the accuracy of the method. This aspect was addressed by using lead and polyethylene shielding blocks. The measured pulse-height distributions were compared with the distributions simulated with the MCNP-PoIiMi code, and excellent agreement was obtained for the Cf-252 and the Am-Be sources. The agreement for the Am-Li source was less favorable due to the uncertainty of measured data. The final results show that for all tested source-shielding configurations, the identification of the Cf-252, Am-Be, and Am-Li sources by direct analysis of the measured pulse-height distributions is very straightforward, and no subsequent neutron energy-spectrum unfolding is required. (authors)

[en] Organic liquid scintillation detectors are valuable for the detection of special nuclear material since they are capable of detecting both neutrons and gamma rays. Scintillators can also provide energy information which is helpful in identification and characterization of the source. In order to design scintillation based measurement systems appropriate simulation tools are needed. MCNPX-PoliMi is capable of simulating scintillation detector response; however, simulations have traditionally been run in analog mode which leads to long computation times. In this paper, non-analog MCNPX-PoliMi mode which uses variance reduction techniques is applied and tested. The non-analog MCNPX-PoliMi simulation test cases use source biasing, geometry splitting and a combination of both variance reduction techniques to efficiently simulate pulse height distribution and then time-of-flight for a heavily shielded case with a ²⁵²Cf source. An improvement factor (I), is calculated for distributions in each of the three cases above to analyze the effectiveness of the non-analog MCNPX-PoliMi simulations in reducing computation time. It is found that of the three cases, the last case which uses a combination of source biasing and geometry splitting shows the most improvement in simulation run time for the same desired variance. For pulse height distributions speedup ranging from a factor 5 to 25 is observed, while for time-of-flights the speedup factors range from 3 to 10. (authors)

[en] In this paper, we present a new pulse shape discrimination (PSD) approach that is based on detailed knowledge of the detector response to given radiation. Traditionally, PSD has been performed using the standard methods such as charge-integration method. Average pulses were obtained for multiple pulse height regions separately for neutrons and gamma rays. The average neutron and gamma-ray pulses were implemented into the new PSD algorithm for classification of a large number of measured pulses. This new PSD approach proves to be more accurate than the standard charge-integration PSD method for low-energy neutron and gamma rays under 90 keVee (keV electron equivalent). The improvement is greater than a factor of two for neutrons in the smallest pulse height bin considered, which was from 26 to 35 keVee. For this pulse height bin, which corresponds to a total energy deposited by the neutron with energy between 200 and 260 keV, approximately 72% of the neutrons were correctly classified. (authors)