Year
1998
Abstract
As environmental concerns over radioactive waste disposal continue to rise, the importance of Californium shufflers as a versatile waste monitoring and segregation instrument also continues to increase. The measurement error reported by these machines is largely dependent on the distribution of sources or contaminated material within the matrix being assayed. As shufflers become increasingly employed and their waste management uses also increase, the importance of minimizing their reported measurement error becomes significant. This paper presents the technique being implemented at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant for reducing the shuffler error when detecting U235 in radioactive waste. Important features of this technique and its implementation are presented. The technique is based on the position correction technique developed by Los Alamos. Our measurement technique utilizes an alternative hardware configuration and a determination of the required transport matrix based on an analysis of the detector - source geometry. Preliminary experimental data has been obtained demonstrating the potential for significantly reducing the measurement error. A discussion of this data illustrates the potential value of this technique.