Determination of the Irradiation History of Amencium/Beryllium Reactor Startup Sources Using Gamma Spectroscopy 'LA-UR-16-22770'

摘要

Since its inception in the late 1990's the mission of the Off-Site Source Recovery Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory has been to remove from the public domain unwanted, excess, and abandoned radioactive sealed sources that pose a potential threat to health or national security [1] Characterization for disposal of well documented sources is performed through the use of Acceptable Knowledge (AK) based upon documentation that provides the isotope, activity and date of birth of the sources [2] For neutron irradiated sources, the transmutation invalidates the AK based characterization. For sources with known irradiation histories, the code ORIGEN [3] can be used to determine the current isotopic composition. In cases where an irradiated source is located but its history is uncertain, the problem of characterization becomes significantly more complicated.