Comparison of MCNP and experimental measurements for an HPGe-based spectroscopy portal monitor

The necessity to monitor international commercial transportation for illicit nuclear materials resulted in the installation of many nuclear radiation detection systems in Portal Monitors. To overcome the difficulty of innocent alarms due to a large content of natural radioactivity or medical nuclide...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of radioanalytical and nuclear chemistry 2008-05, Vol.276 (2), p.399-405
Main Authors: Keyser, R. M., Hensley, W., Twomey, T. R., Upp, D. L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Application of Nuclear Techniques to National Security and Treaty Monitoring
Chemistry
Chemistry and Materials Science
Configurations
Diagnostic Radiology
Field of view
Hadrons
Heavy Ions
HIGH-PURITY GE DETECTORS
Inorganic Chemistry
INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Linearity
Measuring instruments
Monitors
MONTE CARLO METHOD
National security
Natural radioactivity
Nuclear Chemistry
Nuclear Physics
Nuclear radiation
Nuclides
PERFORMANCE TESTING
Physical Chemistry
RADIATION DETECTION
RADIOACTIVITY
Spectrum analysis
TERMINAL FACILITIES
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Summary:The necessity to monitor international commercial transportation for illicit nuclear materials resulted in the installation of many nuclear radiation detection systems in Portal Monitors. To overcome the difficulty of innocent alarms due to a large content of natural radioactivity or medical nuclides, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) supported the writing of the ANSI N42.38 standard (Performance Criteria for Spectroscopy-Based Portal Monitors used for Homeland Security) to define the performance of a portal monitor with nuclide identification capabilities, called a Spectroscopy Portal Monitor. To accomplish the necessary performance, several different HPGe detector configurations were modeled using MCNP for the horizontal field of view (FOV) and vertical linearity of response over the detection zone of 5 meters by 4.5 meters for 661 keV as representative of the expected nuclides of interest. The configuration with the best result was built and tested. The results for the FOV as a function of energy and the linearity show good agreement with the model and performance exceeding the requirements of N42.38.
ISSN:0236-5731
1588-2780
DOI:10.1007/s10967-008-0518-9