The application of radiochronometry during the 4th collaborative materials exercise of the nuclear forensics international technical working group (ITWG)

Michael J. Kristo; Ross Williams; Amy M. Gaffney; Theresa M. Kayzar-Boggs; Kerri C. Schorzman; Petra Lagerkvist; Anna Vesterlund; Henrik Ramebäck; Aubrey N. Nelwamondo; Deon Kotze; Kyuseok Song; Sang Ho Lim; Sun-Ho Han; Chi-Gyu Lee; Ayako Okubo; Didier Maloubier; Daniele Cardona; Pavel Samuleev; Ike Dimayuga; Zsolt Varga; Maria Wallenius; Klaus Mayer; Elaine Loi; Elizabeth Keegan; Jennifer Harrison; Sangeeth Thiruvoth; Floyd E. Stanley; Khal J. Spencer; Lav Tandon

doi:10.1007/s10967-017-5680-5

The application of radiochronometry during the 4th collaborative materials exercise of the nuclear forensics international technical working group (ITWG)
Journal article, 2018

In a recent international exercise, 10 international nuclear forensics laboratories successfully performed radiochronometry on three low enriched uranium oxide samples, providing 12 analytical results using three different parent-daughter pairs serving as independent chronometers. The vast majority of the results were consistent with one another and consistent with the known processing history of the materials. In general, for these particular samples, mass spectrometry gave more accurate and more precise analytical results than decay counting measurements. In addition, the concordance of the U-235-Pa-231 and U-234-Th-230 chronometers confirmed the validity of the age dating assumptions, increasing confidence in the resulting conclusions.

Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry

Nuclear forensics

Radiochronometry

Uranium oxide

Thermal ionization mass spectrometry

Alpha spectrometry

Gamma spectrometry