Rapid assay of plutonium in soils by passive L x-ray counting

A technique has been developed to rapidly measure the presence of plutonium in soils, filters, smears, and glass waste forms by measuring the uranium L-shell x-ray emissions associated with the decay of plutonium. In addition, the technique can simultaneously acquire spectra of samples and automatically analyze them for the amount of americium, and gamma-ray emitting activation and fission products present. The samples are counted with a large area, thin-window, n-type Ge spectrometer which is equally efficient for the detection of low energy x-rays (>10 key), as well as high-energy gamma rays (>1 MeV). A 8192-channel analyzer is used to acquire the entire photon spectrum at one time. A dual-energy, time-tagged pulser, that is injected into the test input of the preamplifier to monitor the energy scale, detector resolution, and pulse pile-up will be installed in FY-92. The L x-ray portion of each spectrum is analyzed by a linear least-squares spectral fitting technique originally developed for the analysis of spectra from NaI(Tl) detectors. The gamma-ray portion of each spectrum is analyzed by a standard Ge gamma-ray analysis package. Detection limits (also referred to as lower limits of detection) for plutonium in contaminated soils that have been achieved by this technique aremore » reported.« less