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Full-Text Articles in Nuclear Engineering
A Generalized Method For Fissile Material Characterization Using Short-Lived Fission Product Gamma Spectroscopy, Justin Richard Knowles
A Generalized Method For Fissile Material Characterization Using Short-Lived Fission Product Gamma Spectroscopy, Justin Richard Knowles
Doctoral Dissertations
Characterizing the fissile content of nuclear materials is of particular interest to the safeguards and nuclear forensics communities. Short-lived fission product gamma spectroscopy offers a significant reduction in analysis time and detection limits when compared to traditional non-destructive assay measurements. Through this work, a fully generalizable method that can be applied to variations in fissile compositions and neutron spectra was developed for the modeling and measurement of short-lived fission product gamma-rays. This method uses a 238-group neutron flux that was characterized for two pneumatic tube positions in the High Flux Isotope Reactor using flux monitor irradiations. This flux spectrum was …
Actinium-225 Production Via Proton Irradiation Of Thorium-232, Justin Reed Griswold
Actinium-225 Production Via Proton Irradiation Of Thorium-232, Justin Reed Griswold
Doctoral Dissertations
High energy proton spallation reactions on natural thorium metal targets have been utilized to produce multi mCi [milliCurie] quantities of Actinium-225. Theoretical cross sections for actinium and thorium isotopes as well as for a select number of the fission products produced in these reactions were generated by the Monte Carlo radiation transport code PHITS to simulate the experimental data obtained from sixteen irradiations of thorium metal targets with 25-210 µA [microampere] proton beams ranging in energies from 77 to 192 MeV. Irradiations were conducted at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), while target dissolution and processing …