Year
1982
Abstract
The versatility of energy-dispersive x-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis allows its application in a number of in-plant process and safeguards special nuclear materials assay situations. This paper presents an approach to the analysis of single-energy transmission-corrected XRF and demonstrates its application to plutonium and mixed plutonium-uranium solutions. The formulation modifies the planar-sample, far-fieldgeometry XRF equation to treat cylindrical samples in a near-field geometry and calculates the sample-attenuation correction factor from a single-energy transmission measurement. This approach leads to a straightforward calibration procedure and a method for determining when the presence of a sample contaminant may bias the measurement result. A procedure for determining the special nuclear materials concentration in the presence of such a contaminant is also presented.