Verification of 235U mass content in nuclear fuel plates by an absolute method

Abstract

Nuclear Safeguards is referred to a verification System by which a State can control all nuclear materials (NM) and nuclear activities under its authority. An effective and efficient Safeguards System must include a system of measurements with capabilities sufficient to verify such NM. Measurements of NM using absolute methods could eliminate the dependency on NM Standards, which are necessary for other relative or semi-absolute methods. In this work, an absolute method has been investigated to verify the 235U mass content in nuclear fuel plates of Material Testing Reactor (MTR) type. The most intense gamma-ray signature at 185.7 keV emitted after α-decay of the 235U nuclei was employed in the method. The measuring system (an HPGe-spectrometer) was mathematically calibrated for efficiency using the general Monte Carlo transport code MCNP-4B. The calibration results and the measured net count rate were used to estimate the 235U mass content in fuel plates at different detector-to-fuel plate distances. Two sets of fuel plates, containing natural and low enriched uranium, were measured at the Fuel Fabrication Facility. Average accuracies for the estimated 235U masses of about 2.62% and 0.3% are obtained for the fuel plates containing natural and low enriched uranium; respectively, with a precision of about 3%.