Nondestructive quantitative analysis of difficult-to-measure radionuclides Pd and Tc

難測定放射性核種Pdの非破壊定量分析

藤 暢輔   ; 瀬川 麻里子   ; 前田 亮  ; 常山 正幸*; 木村 敦   ; 中村 詔司  ; 遠藤 駿典   ; 海老原 充*

Toh, Yosuke; Segawa, Mariko; Maeda, Makoto; Tsuneyama, Masayuki*; Kimura, Atsushi; Nakamura, Shoji; Endo, Shunsuke; Ebihara, Mitsuru*

Considering the expanding demand for nuclear waste management of the spent nuclear fuel materials in near future, a non-destructive analytical scheme applicable to the most difficult-to-measure nuclide of Pd, which emits no decay gamma-rays and whose half-life is too long to be decayed out during a human lifetime, was designed. The scheme consists of a sophisticated instrument capable of the detection of gamma-rays by Ge detectors coupled with time-of-flight measurement of neutrons and a high-intensity pulsed neutron beam, and can simultaneously perform TOF-coupled prompt gamma-ray analysis (TOF-PGA) as well as PGA and NRCA. An analytical capability was evaluated by applying to simulated samples of the Tc-platinum group metals (Tc-PGMs) obtained by the group partitioning process of spent nuclear fuels, which contain not only Pd but also Tc and another difficult-to-measure fission product. It was confirmed that, although PGA and NRCA could accurately analyze both nuclides in individual single substances, only TOF-PGA can analyze Pd as well as Tc in the Tc-PGMs simulated sample. The TOF-PGA measurement technique can be widely used for the non-destructive analysis of Pd and Tc in nuclear wastes.