PLUTONIUM ISOTOPIC ANALYSIS WITH FRAM V4 IN THE LOW ENERGY REGION.

Low-Energy Gamma-ray Spectroscopy (LEGS) is a nondestructive assay (NDA) technique developed in the 1980s. In 1999, it was modified to include a physical-based model for the energy dependent efficiency. It uses the gamma rays in the energy range from approximately 30 keV to 210 keV, except the 100-keV region. This energy region provides intense, well-separated gamma rays from the principal isotopes of plutonium. For applications involving small quantities (mg to g) of freshly separated plutonium in various chemical forms, it is ideally suited for accurate real-time or near real-time isotopic analysis. Since the last modification, LEGS has been incorporated into the FRAM code (Fixed-energy Response-function Analysis with Multiple efficiency), version 4. FRAM v4 is capable of analyzing the peaks in the whole energy range from 30 keV to 1 MeV, including the X-ray region. The new capability of analyzing the peaks in the 100-keV region greatly enhances the plutonium analysis in the 30 keV to 210 keV ranges of the traditional LEGS. We now can analyze both the freshly separated and aged plutonium with greater accuracy