Accountability Quality Shuffler Measurements on Pits

Pits have generally been treated as accountable units that are intact if merely present and they are excluded from the more demanding nondestructive assay requirements. As pits begin to flow into disposition streams, there may be more incentive to measure the masses of their fissile components for accountability purposes. This Department of Energy Office of Safeguards and Security (OSS) Lifecycle Project has explored some ways in which such measurements may be done successfully. The active neutron instrument called a shuffler has been used to measure a variety of actual pits, and a calculational technique has been developed to accurately predict such count rates. Passive multiplicity counting has previously been applied to pits for determining their plutonium contents. This combination of measurement and calculational techniques provide powerful and accurate tools for determining the fissile contents of pits with the quality needed for accountability purposes