Qualitative and quantitative analysis of gamma radioactive isotopes from liquid and solid wastes resulting from the detritiation process of heavy water

Full text: In this study, the operation of the laboratory gamma spectroscopy system is based on measurement and recording of electrical pulses generated by the interaction of gamma rays with a high purity germanium (HPGe) solid state detector, the pulses being directly proportional to the incident gamma ray energy. The gamma rays from the sample (source) produce charged particles by ionization in their interaction with the HPGe detector. A polarization voltage is applied to detector in order to collect the current produced by electrons as a pulse signal. The pulse amplitude is increased by a preamplifier, then the pulse amplitude and the shape are processed by a spectroscopy grade amplifier. An analog to digital converter (ADC) makes the conversion of the pulse intensity value to a numeric value which is sent to a multichannel analyzer (MCA) to be stored and analyzed by computer software. An energy calibration is performed to calibrate the detector and electronics for the gamma energy/ MCA channel assignment. The LGSs is calibrated from 0-2000 keV with a corresponding MCA memory size of 4096 channels. (authors)