PASS, AN EXTENDED-RANGE GE SPECTROMETER FOR RADIONUCLIDE ANALYSIS VIAL-X-RAY, GAMMA-RAY SPECTROMETRY

PASS (Photon Analysis Spectrometer System) is a pulser-equipped, exten ded range, thin-window, Ge detector spectrometer that is capable of au tomatically measuring radionuclide activity concentrations in up to 10 0 samples per day at remediation sites. No operator intervention is re quired after the counting queue for the sample changer has been setup. Actinides are measured from L X-rays following cr decay such as (PU)- P-A-->U-A-4 and Am-241-->Np-237 and from low-energy gamma-rays by spec tral component analysis. Activation, fission products and a few actini des (e.g., Am-241) are measured from their characteristic gamma-ray em ission by fitting the associated peaks. Pulses from a precision, dual- energy pulser can be used to determine the energy scale, provide docum entation of the data quality, and provide a correction for pulse pileu p. Soil, smear, and air particulate samples can be counted. For an 11- g sample counted for 15 min the lower-limits-of-detection are 50, 1, a nd 5 pCi/g for plutonium, americium, and several gamma-ray emitting ra dionuclides, respectively.