Impact of the detector energy resolution on the performance of MGA and MGAU isotopic codes

摘要

Nondestructive measurements of γ-ray and X-ray emissions are often made to characterize special nuclear materials. Various computer codes are available to determine the relative isotopic composition of uranium or plutonium (along with certain other associated nuclides) from analysis of the spectra resulting from such measurements. MGA (Gunnink, Proceedings of the 9th ESARDA symposium on safeguards and nuclear management 167, 1987) and MGAU (Gunnink et al., Proceedings of the IAEA symposium on international safeguards 541, 1994) are among the major isotopic codes. The purpose of this study was to investigate MGA and MGAU performance versus energy resolution of the counting system.