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Undeclared uranium hitches a ride on cobalt exports from Congo, study says
Philippe (left) and Manzuk quantified the amount of uranium that has been exported from the DRC in cobalt shipments or left behind in the environment. (Photo: Joel Hallberg/UW–Madison)
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Princeton University have published a study in Nature Communications that calls attention to a blind spot in nuclear nonproliferation: The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has exported thousands of metric tons of uranium, and there is no accounting for where it has gone.
In partnership with Lighthouse Reports and the Financial Times, UW–Madison nuclear engineering professor and nuclear security expert Sébastien Philippe and Ryan Manzuk, a geologist and research fellow in Philippe’s group and at Princeton, conducted the study using countrywide mineralization and geochemical data.
Mohamed E. Krar, Ahmed M. El-Khatib, Mohamed S. Badawi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 187 | Number 2 | August 2014 | Pages 208-219
Regular Technical Paper | Radiation Measurements and General Instrumentation | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-109
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this work, the full energy peak efficiency for a system of two NaI gamma detectors using spherical radioactive sources is evaluated by applying a new numerical algorithm method, since experimental calibration using volumetric sources is a dominant problem of practical gamma spectrometry. The new method is based on the efficiency transfer technique, where the effective solid angles, the effect of self-absorption of the source matrix, and absorption by the source container and the detector housing materials on detector efficiency are considered. The experimental calibration procedure was done using radioactive spherical sources containing aqueous 152Eu radionuclide, which produces photons with a wide range of energies from 121.78 up to 1408.03 keV. The comparison shows good agreement between the measured and calculated efficiencies for the detector using spherical sources.