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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
College students help develop waste-measuring device at Hanford
A partnership between Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) and Washington State University has resulted in the development of a device to measure radioactive and chemical tank waste at the Hanford Site. WRPS is the contractor at Hanford for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management.
S. E. Lee, Y. Hatano, M. Hara, M. Matsuyama
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 3 | April 2020 | Pages 327-332
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1711855
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nondestructive measurement of tritium (T) content in solid materials is important for safe and cost-effective disposal of contaminated wastes, and beta-ray induced X-ray spectrometry (BIXS) has been developed for this purpose. A common way to obtain depth profiles of T in solids using BIXS is to perform simulation of X-ray spectra for assumed depth profiles and find a profile giving the best agreement with observation. A detailed understanding of attenuation of low-energy X-rays (≤18.6 keV) by detector components such as a window material is required for interpretation of measured spectra and simulation. In this study, BIXS spectra of a tungsten reference sample with known T depth profile were measured using two different semiconductor detectors and simulated using the Monte Carlo simulation toolkit Geant4. In the low-energy region (<2 keV), the difference in internal structure resulted in a noticeable difference in the BIXS spectra. The disagreement between the measured and the simulated spectra was also significant at <2 keV. Nevertheless, at >2 keV, the BIXS spectra were insensitive to the internal structure of the detector, and the simulated spectra agreed well with the measured ones. The mechanism underlying the difference in the low-energy region was discussed.