Year
1995
Abstract
A technique has been developed to determine the Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) Age which is defined as the time since the last chemical processing of the HEU. The HEU age is determined from the ratios of relevant uranium parents and their daughters viz 230Th/234U and 231Pa/235U. Uranium isotopes are quantitatively measured by their characteristic gammas and their daughters by alpha spectroscopy. In some of the samples where HEU is enriched more than 99%, the only mode of HEU age determination is by the measurement of 231Pa since there is negligible quantity of 230Th due to very low atom concentrations of 234U in the sample. In this paper we have presented data and methodology of finding the age of two HEU samples.