EVALUATION OF THE CONVERSION OF A VAX-BASED CALORIMETER TO OPERATION BY A PERSONAL COMPUTER

Year
1994
Author(s)
Teresa L. Cremers - Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lynn A. Foster - Los Alamos National Laboratory
James M. Pecos - Los Alamos National Laboratory
R. B. Perry - Argonne National Laboratory
D. Gutierrez - Los Alamos National Laboratory
Erwin A. Jung - Argonne National Laboratory
Abstract
Water-bath calorimeters designed and built by EG&G Mound Applied Technologies are used at the Los Alamos Plutonium Facility to perform assays of radioactive material. The data from these instruments are collected and analyzed by Digital Equipment Corporation PDP and VAX Computers. These computers are costly and have proved troublesome to maintain in the operating environment of the Plutonium Facility. We have converted one calorimeter to a PCbased- data-acquisition system (DAS) by replacing the PDP computer and associated electronics with an entirely new data collection system based on a 486 PC with an internal analog-to-digital conversion card (ADC). The new system has been tested with 238Pu heat source standards and 239Pu process items. The assay time, precision, and accuracy of these results are compared to those obtained with the original Mound Hardware.