Quantification of 235U and 238U activity concentrations for undeclared nuclear materials by a digital gamma–gamma coincidence spectroscopy

The purpose of this study is to investigate the possibility of verifying depleted uranium (DU), natural uranium (NU), low enriched uranium (LEU) and high enriched uranium (HEU) by a developed digital gamma–gamma coincidence spectroscopy. The spectroscopy consists of two NaI(Tl) scintillators and XIA LLC Digital Gamma Finder (DGF)/Pixie-4 software and card package. The results demonstrate that the spectroscopy provides an effective method of 235U and 238U quantification based on the count rate of their gamma–gamma coincidence counting signatures. The main advantages of this approach over the conventional gamma spectrometry include the facts of low background continuum near coincident signatures of 235U and 238U, less interference from other radionuclides by the gamma–gamma coincidence counting, and region-of-interest (ROI) imagine analysis for uranium enrichment determination. Compared to conventional gamma spectrometry, the method offers additional advantage of requiring minimal calibrations for 235U and 238U quantification at different sample geometries.