PRELIMINARY URANIUM ENRICHMENT ANALYSIS RESULTS USING CADMIUM ZINC TELLURIDE DETECTORS

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and EG and G ORTEC have jointly developed a portable ambient-temperature detection system that can be used in a number of application scenarios. The detection syste m uses a planar cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) detector with custom-desi gned detector support electronics developed at LLNL and is based on th e recently released MicroNOMAD multichannel analyzer (MCA) produced by QRTEC. Spectral analysis is performed using software developed at LLN L that was originally designed for use with high-purity germanium (HPG e) detector systems. In one application, the CZT detection system dete rmines uranium enrichments ranging from less than 3% to over 75% to wi thin accuracies of 20%. The analysis was performed using sample sizes of 200 g or larger and acquisition times of 30 min. We have demonstrat ed the capabilities of this system by analyzing the spectra gathered b y the CZT detection system from uranium sources of several enrichments . These experiments demonstrate that current CZT detectors can, in som e cases, approach performance criteria that were previously the exclus ive domain of larger HPGe detector systems.