Measurement and analysis system for the identification of shielded neutron sources

Accurate identification of radioactive materials is essential in areas such as nuclear nonproliferation, international safeguards, nuclear material control and accountability, and national security. Recently, a new application of a technique that acquires neutron pulse-height spectra using a liquid scintillation detector, a digitizer, and an optimized pulse shape discrimination technique was proposed. The method can be used for accurate identification of neutron sources such as Cf-252, Am-Be, and Am-Li. All these sources were investigated in combination with several shielding blocks made of polyethylene and lead. From the results it is apparent that source identification is possible by the data inspection of the measured pulse-height distributions. The general slope of the distributions can be used for the source identification, and all sources tested can be accurately identified. All measured pulse-height distributions were also compared to distributions simulated with the MCNP-PoliMi code and very good agreement was achieved.