A Prompt Gamma-ray Neutron Activation Analysis (PGNAA) facility at Dhruva reactor for analytical applications

Prompt Gamma-ray Neutron Activation Analysis (PGNAA) is an online measurement isotope specific technique capable of simultaneous multielement determination using thermal/cold neutron beam mainly from research reactors. It is practically used for quantifying low Z elements (H, N, P, Si, S), neutron poisons like B, Cd, Gd, Dy, Sm and Eu as well as many transition elements at major to trace concentration level depending on the thermal neutron cross section. A PGNAA facility utilizing thermal reflected neutron beam (0.005 eV) was temporarily set-up by RCD and SPPD, BARC at Guided Tube (GT) Lab, Dhruva reactor. The beam dimension was varied between 1x1 to 1x4 cm² using a cadmium filter shows the PGNAA set-up with sample holder and HPGe detector arrangements. The experimentally measured thermal neutron flux was found to be ~10⁵n/cm²/s using Indium as the flux monitor, where in the activation product ¹⁶In (54 min, 417, 1097 keV) was used. External shield for the detector was set-up using lead bricks along with Cadmium sheets and a 20 mm Pb-collimator was used for on-line gamma-ray measurement from the sample