Year
2019
Abstract
The UK-Norway initiative (UKNi) has been investigating methodologies and technologies for the future verification of nuclear warhead dismantlement. An important development in this regard is the “Information Barrier” (IB) - an automated gamma-ray detection system to verify two important attributes of the nuclear warhead - presence of plutonium 239Pu, and isotopic ratio of 239Pu / 240Pu. A detailed algorithm of the UKNi method has been published on http://ukni.info. In the present paper, an attempt has been made to analyze the robustness and sensitivity of the algorithm used in UKNi-IB. In our analyses, special attention has been given to the plutonium isotopic ratio determination. The investigation was made on gamma-ray data from different plutonium samples that were collected during the UKNi-IB development. The preliminary results show that few discrepancies have been observed on the adopted peak fitting methodology by UKNi-IB. It is further noted that insufficient attention was given to analysis of the background radiation problem while adopting the algorithm. A spoofing analysis using other radioactive sources that may deteriorate the results of the IB has also been made. The description of the investigation analysis on the UKNi-IB methodology and summary of results will be presented. In the end a few suggestions for the future improvement of the algorithm and methodology will be discussed.