Wide-range plutonium isotopic analysis with CDTE detector

Nondestructive analysis (NDA) techniques applied to bulk nuclear materials (NM) are important for nuclear safeguards and material control because of timeliness, cost-effectiveness and containment integrity. The common NDA techniques, calorimetry and neutron coincidence counting, require knowledge of the isotopic composition of the material quantitative interpretation of these measurements. Gamma-ray spectroscopy with high-resolution detectors is a well-developed NDA technique for isotopics. The use of intrinsic germanium detectors cooled to cryogenic temperatures for isotopic measurements is sometimes difficult or even impossible because of severe access limitations with the sensitive, heavy detectors. Highly portable isotopics measurements are needed for in-situ verification of bulk NM quantities or, in many cases, for measurements of holdup quantities. This paper summarizes the gamma-ray measurements with a new, portable CdTe detector. It also presents the detailed results of the wide-range isotopic analysis of plutonium with FRAM v4, the first results of this kind for a non-cryogenic detector.