• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
• /
• v.43 no.4
• /
• pp.137-142
• /
• 2018

Background: Gamma-ray detectors having a thin window of a material with low atomic number can increase the true coincidence summing effects for radionuclides emitting X-rays or gamma-rays. This effect can make efficiency calibration or spectrum analysis more complicated. In this study, a Cu shield was tested as an X-ray filter to neglect the true coincidence summing effect by X-rays and gamma-rays in gamma-ray spectrometry, in order to simplify gamma-ray energy spectrum analysis. Materials and Methods: A Cu shield was designed and applied to an n-type high-purity germanium detector having an $X-{\gamma}$ summing effect during efficiency calibration. This was tested using a commercial, certified mixed gamma-ray source. The feasibility of a Cu shield was evaluated by comparing efficiency calibration results with and without the shield. Results and Discussion: In this study, the thickness of a Cu shield needed to avoid true coincidence summing effects due to $X-{\gamma}$ was tested and determined to be 1 mm, considering the detection efficiency desired for higher energy. As a result, the accuracy of the detection efficiency calibration was improved by more than 13% by reducing $X-{\gamma}$ summing. Conclusion: The $X-{\gamma}$ summing effect should be considered, along with ${\gamma}-{\gamma}$ summing, when a detection efficiency calibration is implemented and appropriate shielding material can be useful for simplifying analysis of the gamma-ray energy spectra.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.55 no.12
• /
• pp.4472-4476
• /
• 2023

In this study, it has been shown that the true coincidence summing correction factor can be obtained for the first time using the PHITS Monte Carlo program. Determining this correction factor using different methods and tools in each laboratory to increase the possibility of achieving high-efficiency measurement conditions is still popular in gamma-ray spectrometry. By using ¹³³Ba, ¹⁵²Eu, ¹³⁴Cs, and ⁶⁰Co point sources, the true coincidence summing factor was investigated in both near and far counting geometries for 15 different energy values. GESPECOR software was used to validate the results obtained with PHITS. A remarkable agreement was obtained between PHITS and GESPECOR, with a discrepancy of less than 3%. With this study, a new tool has been proposed to obtain the true coincidence summing factor, which is one of the significant correction factors investigated/calculated in gamma-ray spectrometric studies.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.48 no.3
• /
• pp.778-784
• /
• 2016

HyperGam-U was recently developed to determine uranium enrichment based on ${\gamma}$- and X-ray spectroscopy analysis. The $XK_{\alpha}$ region of the uranium spectrum contains 13 peaks for $^{235}U$ and $^{238}U$ and is used mainly for analysis. To describe the X-ray peaks, a Lorentzian broadened shape function was used, and methods were developed to reduce the number of fitting parameters for decomposing the strongly overlapping peaks using channel-energy, energy-width, and energy-efficiency calibration functions. For validation, eight certified reference material uranium samples covering uranium enrichments from 1% to 99% were measured using a high-resolution planar high-purity germanium detector and analyzed using the HyperGam-U code. When corrections for the attenuation and true coincidence summing were performed for the detection geometry in this experiment, the goodness of fit was improved by a few percent. The enrichment bias in this study did not exceed 2% compared with the certified values for all measured samples.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.51 no.2
• /
• pp.526-532
• /
• 2019

In this study, an in-house $^{152}Eu$ calibration source was produced from a custom epoxy matrix with a density of ${\rho}=1.14g\;cm^{-3}$, which is chemically stable and durable form after its solidification. The homogeneity of $^{152}Eu$ in matrix was obtained better than 98%. For a Marinelli beaker geometry, an efficiency calibration procedure was applied to a n-type, coaxial, 78.5% relative efficient HPGe detector in the energy range of 121.7-1408.0 keV by using in-house $^{152}Eu$ calibration source. Then the measured efficiencies for Marinelli geometry were compared with the results calculated by MEFFTRAN and ANGLE softwares for the validation. Although MEFFTRAN and ANGLE have two different efficiency transfer algorithms to calculate the efficiencies, they usually need to use a reliable and accurate reference efficiency values as input data. Hence, reference efficiency values were obtained experimentally from a multinuclide standard source for the same detector-Marinelli geometry. In the present source characterization, the corrections required for self-absorption and true coincidence summing effects for $^{152}Eu$ gamma-rays were also obtained for a such close counting geometry condition. The experimental results confirmed the validity of efficiency calculations obtained by MEFFTRAN and ANGLE softwares that are calculation tools.