Prospects for Spent Fuel Measurements Using High-Rate Germanium Detectors

Current efforts being made by the Next Generation Safeguard Initiative (NGSI) include determining the mass content of fissile isotopes contained within spent fuel through the spectroscopy of high-energy delayed gamma rays. Studies being performed indicate the primary difficulty is the ability to pull out the desired signal from the abundant low-energy background associated with spent fuel fission products. One way to do this is by improving the count rate efficiency of germanium detectors in order to measure intense gamma ray sources. This presentation will describe the many prospects of high-rate germanium detectors and delayed-gamma techniques, primarily discussing the efforts to merge these into a unique and viable system for measuring spent fuel. This work is supported by the Next Generation Safeguards Initiative, Office of Nuclear Safeguards and Security, National Nuclear Security Administration. This abstract is approved for release by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, PNNL-SA-85065.