Identifying and quantifying short-lived fission products from thermal fission of HEU using portable HPGe detectors

Due to the emerging potential for trafficking of special nuclear material, research programs are investigating current capabilities of commercially available portable gamma ray detection systems. Presented in this paper are the results of three different portable high-purity germanium (HPGe) detectors used to identify short-lived fission products generated from thermal neutron interrogation of small samples of highly enriched uranium. Samples were irradiated at the Washington State University Nuclear Radiation Center’s 1 MW TRIGA reactor. The three portable, HPGe detectors used were the ORTEC MicroDetective [1], the ORTEC Detective [2], and the Canberra Falcon [3]. Canberra’s GENIE-2000 software was used to analyze the spectral data collected from each detector. Ultimately, these three portable detectors were able to identify a large range of fission products showing potential for material discrimination.