A Computer Program for Identifying and Measuring Components in a Mixture of gamma-Emitting Radionuclides

摘要

A computer program was developed for the analysis of the components of a gamma pulse-height distribution composed of a mixture of two or more gamma-emitting radionuclides. The program consists of (1) identifying the largest gamma photopeak and matching its energy with the largest photopeak of each of the individual radionuclides that compose the mixture, (2) subtracting enough of the individual radionuclide gamma pulse-height distribution from the mixture so that the photopeak in question is reduced by a certain small percentage, and (3) continuing the incremental subtraction process until the photopeaks in the mixture can no longer be identified. This computer program has several advantages over other computer programs that have been developed to do the equivalent of a radiochemical analysis on a mixture of radionuclides. It will be especially useful in analyzing the large number of low activity mixtures of radionuclides that are to be made in the program to determine the physical-chemical species of the radionuclide debris produced by underwater nuclear explosions. (Author)