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Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques
S. Joseph Cope CNEC Fellow, PhD Student Advisor: Dr. Robert Hayes Consortium for Nonproliferation Enabling Capabilities (CNEC) Department of Nuclear Engineering North Carolina State University
2 Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques S. Joseph Cope
• Scope and background • Methods and materials • Conservative TRU estimator model • Results (Kernel density estimator)
– Gaussian superposition and deconvolution – Next individual filter predictions
• Discussion and implications • Conclusions and future work
Outline
3 Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques S. Joseph Cope
• Goal: Graded approach for rapid, defensible TRU activity estimates – Hours and days vs weeks for full radiochemistry
• Method: Field Deployable Portable Air Samplers with various single filter detection suites – Gross alpha/beta, spectroscopic, and ROI
Nuclear Assay in Radiological Emergency Response via Air Monitoring
• Gas Proportional Counter • PIPS detector (silicon) • Phoswich
• Liquid Scintillation • Radeye Handheld Probe • Portable HPGe
4 Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques S. Joseph Cope
• Rapid, defensible, conservative method for TRU activity estimation (Master’s work)
• Graded Approach – minutes hours days – Handheld probe PIPS/Phoswich/LSC HPGe – Truck/mobile lab analysis prioritize samples of
interest for additional analysis or radiochemistry
Research Snapshot
5 Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques S. Joseph Cope
• Go/no-go decision levels with technical basis – Cognizant to the technician and end user decision maker
• Introduce TRU check source to NORM background filter experiment – Variations in geographic region, seasonal, diurnal and
local weather conditions
Goal: Continuing to engage more students and pursue mission critical data with national security implications
Nonproliferation and Emergency Response
6 Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques S. Joseph Cope
• A rapid, defensible, and conservative TRU activity estimate with an emergency response decision level for clearing air filter samples – Radon and thoron are known interferents to TRU
determination on air filters; concentrations are not constant over time or easily forward predicted
– Samples containing no TRU content compared to the expected value of zero activity
– Quantifies the bias of the long-lived thoron progeny to estimate the TRU activity on the filter rapidly
Scope
7 Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques S. Joseph Cope
Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material
8 Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques S. Joseph Cope
• Planned releases (universities, power plants, labs)
• RDDs
Anthropogenic and TRU Sources
• Detonations
• Accidents
9 Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques S. Joseph Cope
• Diurnal and seasonal variations
Challenges to Radon Concentration
Seftelis et al. “Diurnal variation of radon progeny.” Journal of Environmental Radioactivity. 2007
10 Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques S. Joseph Cope
• Dependency on meteorological conditions
Challenges to Radon Concentration
Seftelis et al. “Diurnal variation of radon progeny.” Journal of Environmental Radioactivity. 2007
11 Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques S. Joseph Cope
• Grab sampling, 02 Dec 2016 – 23 Jan 2017 • Gross alpha, 2 hr counting times in 5 min increments • 23 paired experiments (46 filters total) • Outside Research Building II, NCSU Centennial Campus • Approximately 0.5 m between samplers, nominal flow
rate 29.2 ± 1.6 LPM
Materials and Methods
12 Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques S. Joseph Cope
• F&J Specialty Products Portable Air Samplers (Model DF-AB-75L and DF-AB-40Li)
Methods and Materials
• Bladewerx SabreISC (integrated sample counter) with 47 mm solid-state ion-implanted silicon detector
• FP47M glass fiber, 47 mm circular discs from F&J Specialty Products
13 Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques S. Joseph Cope
• 23 dual (paired) experiments considered
Time and Length of Grab Sampling
Samples of note for attribution of the 4th
Gaussian curve
14 Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques S. Joseph Cope
• m1 estimates the radon progeny initial activity on the filter (Bq)
• m2 estimates the effective decay constant folding in all of the radon progeny (min-1) – Effective radon progeny t1/2 ~ 30 min (NCRP 1988)
• m3 estimates the TRU content on the filter (Bq) – Expected value is zero ignoring thoron contributions
Simplified Progeny Decay Equation
1 2 3( ) exp( )y t m m t m= − +
15 Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques S. Joseph Cope
• Among the short time scale of counting (~2 hrs), the thoron contribution, when present, is relatively unchanged (t1/2 thoron ~ 10.6 hrs)
• The conservative m3 folds in the thoron activity to the long-lived TRU estimate – Thoron contribution builds up over sample duration
compared to radon which saturates within 1-2 hours – Samples known to be CLEAN (no TRU content)
Conservative TRU Estimator (m3)
16 Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques S. Joseph Cope
• Utilizing a KDE removes error associated with incorrect binning of mean values with known uncertainty and creates a continuous distribution for statistical analysis
Kernel Density Estimator (KDE) for m3
( ) 212
1
1( )2
i
i
x
n
i i
eKDE xn
µσ
σ π
−−
=
= ∑
17 Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques S. Joseph Cope
• Superposition of multiple Gaussian distributions – Levenberg-Marquardt fitting provides error estimate
Gaussian Fit and Deconvolution of the KDE
3 Gaussian Fit
4 Gaussian Fit
18 Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques S. Joseph Cope
Gaussian Deconvolution of the KDE
• Previous work has attributed each Gaussian curve to a specific component of the experiment based on center and spread statistics rather than amplitude
• Novel fit of a 4th Gaussian curve to account for positively biased anomaly in the KDE 0.18 Bq.
19 Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques S. Joseph Cope
• Histogram of upper 95% confidence level for all individual TRU activity estimates using the fitted LM uncertainty for each filter
• All upper 95% TRU estimates are greater than zero; potentially a method for strictly conservative TRU activity estimates contained in a relatively small bias (<1.5 Bq)
What is potentially a radical advance?
Two outliers omitted
20 Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques S. Joseph Cope
• Upper 95% estimate applied individually for each filter based on LM fitting; projected screening decision level for any individual filter, above which, a TRU activity hit is considered for the sampled times and region; – Filters considered to be absent of abnormal TRU activity
• Results for TRU activity and Gaussian attributions match expectations from known physics and dispersion of radon and thoron progeny;
• The 4th fitted Gaussian accounts for longer sampling periods and trends with the radon progeny concentration – Higher thoron buildup over sampling time along with radon peaks
in the morning hours due to temperature inversions
Discussion
21 Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques S. Joseph Cope
Emergency Response and Nonproliferation
• Rigorous uncertainty determination, even if large, allows for defensible emergency response decisions (evacuation)
• Rapid NDA screening technique to reduce the burden of throughput placed on limited radiochemistry resources – Helps to prioritize samples for analysis before arrival to the lab – Initial proliferation indicators screened quickly with quality
• Deconvolution of the KDE into Gaussians for each variability allows for hypothesis testing on individual contributions
• Discrimination of radionuclides with grossly different decay constants
22 Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques S. Joseph Cope
• Rapid filter counting methods allow defensible estimates – Good for proliferation and emergency response screening
• Conservative 95% upper confidence level for a single filter at 0.4 Bq for seasonal and geographic interests with two locally disturbed samples omitted – Assuming a representative characterization of the spread in
radon/thoron concentrations, these results would be reproducible in similar geographical regions and times of year
• Seek to artificially introduce Pu-239 onto a filter counting experiment to simulate TRU content masked by the NORM buildup; analysis of alpha energy ROI for Pu-239
Conclusions and Future Work
23 Transuranic Air Filter Analysis Techniques S. Joseph Cope
Special thanks to…
Questions? See me at the poster session!
S. Joseph Cope, [email protected]
This material is based upon work supported by the Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration under Award Number(s) DE-NA0002576.