Year
2002
Abstract
The Trilateral Initiative Technical Workshop at the Joint Research Center in Ispra, Italy, held December 2001, had several goals. One goal was to perform measurements of plutonium in the storage containers that will be used by the facilities most likely to participate in the initiative. These containers, the AT400R in Russia and the 9975 in the United States, attenuate the radiation signatures that are needed to make attribute measurements. Understanding the effects of these containers is critical to the proper optimization of the attribute measurement equipment. To this end, a simple neutron counter was constructed of eight small slab detectors. This simple system was modeled, along with the storage containers, using Monte Carlo transport methods. Before and during the workshop, plutonium samples were measured, and the results were compared with calculations. In addition, the system was characterized and calibrated for several neutron analysis methods, including coincidence and multiplicity counting. This exercise was performed to investigate the potential application of such a simple system for use as a lowlevel, attribute measurement instrument. We report the results of this work in this paper.