Development of waste drum monitoring system for plutonium estimation

The screening based waste drum monitor system using neutron detectors was developed and evaluated. Present paper describes the studies carried out on the system evaluation for Plutonium Estimation. The system uses three BF₃ neutron detectors with 3.8 cm HDPE moderator for two extreme detectors and with 7 cm HDPE moderator for middle detector arranged all three detectors in linear geometry. The middle detector shows less background and better sensitivity than of the two. Present system can detect 85 mg of plutonium at counting time of minimum 1000 second or more. With changing the detectors geometry of the system to triangular geometry and replacing all the detectors with 7 cm moderator systems, performance as well as MDL can be improved. (author)