Abstract
Internal conversion electron (ICE) spectra of thin 238,239,240Pu sources, measured with a windowless Peltier-cooled silicon drift detector (SDD), were deconvoluted and relative ICE intensities were derived from the fitted peak areas. Corrections were made for energy dependence of the full-energy-peak counting efficiency, based on Monte Carlo simulations. A good agreement was found with the theoretically expected internal conversion coefficient (ICC) values calculated from the BrIcc database.
Highlights
Plutonium has been investigated from many angles (Clark et al, 2018), among which analytical detection techniques for nuclear security and safeguards is an important one
The major relative intensities for L1,2; L3; M1,2; M3,4,5; N, O+ derived from the fit with BEST agree within 0.5–1.5% with the BrIcc data
There is poor agreement with the 238Pu and 239Pu data produced by Dion et al (2016); the differences amount up to 5%, even though their measurements were based on the same silicon drift detector (SDD) technique
Summary
Plutonium has been investigated from many angles (Clark et al, 2018), among which analytical detection techniques for nuclear security and safeguards is an important one. For the determination of plutonium in environmental samples, nuclides of interest are generally 238Pu, 239Pu and 240Pu. Since the intensities of their characteristic gamma-ray emissions are very low, isotopic analysis by gamma spectrometry is a challenge for low activity levels of plutonium. High-resolution alpha-particle spectrometry (Pommé and Sibbens, 2008) is a well-suited alternative technique for measuring isotopic activity ratios in a plutonium mixture, it suffers from close interferences between the 239Pu and 240Pu peaks and between the 238Pu and 241Am peaks, respectively (see references in Pommé et al, 2016). ICE spectrometry is better suited than alpha spectrometry in preserving its capability to determine the 240Pu/239Pu isotopic ratio as a function of sample thickness (Peräjärvi et al, 2014). As a complementary or standalone technique it requires further research on spectrum deconvolution and reference emission data
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