The neutron coincidence counting (NCC) method has been applied for many years in nuclear safeguards. This method is beneficial in allowing large items, such as fuel assemblies, to be interrogated evenly, leading to precise and accurate non-destructive assay measurements of fissile materials. Traditionally NCC has been performed with helium-3 detectors with measurements of thermalized neutrons...
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) must ensure the peaceful use of all nuclear materials with a budget that has been compared in size to that of the police department in Vienna. This includes, for example, coverage of over 1,200 nuclear facilities spread around the globe and evaluation of over a million nuclear material reports annually. The amount of information the IAEA collects...
The new generation fresh fuels assemblies contain more burned poisons (gadolinium) to compensate the reactivity and the adjustment of the distribution of power in the reactor core. However, the presence of gadolinium hinders the measurement of the uranium quantity using the traditional Uranium Neutron Coincidence Collar (UNCL) in safeguards applications. This non-destructive system, based on...
Neutron multiplicity counting is a technique widely used in safeguards for the determination of mass of fissile material. The multi-channel list-mode recording of neutron data provides a large amount of data, the analysis of which provides increased possibilities due to the exact time and channel information. Here a new method for dead-time correction in neutron multiplicity counting shall be...
