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

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.