Abstract: This study addresses challenges in characterizing nuclear-irradiated graphite from decommissioned reactors. Traditional liquid scintillation counting methods involve time-consuming steps for analyzing betaemitting activation products. We propose a non-destructive method based on a plastic scintillation beta spectrometer coupled to a MLEM deconvolution algorithm. Using a MCNP6.2 numerical model of the detector, we obtained the reference datasets to perform the deconvolution of measured spectra on graphite samples. We determined the main activation products' activity values for both pure ( 14 C, 36 Cl, 90 Sr) and non-pure (60 Co, 133 Ba, 137 Cs, 152 Eu, 154 Eu) beta emitters. The proposed methodology would significantly reduce costs and time for measuring and characterizing irradiated graphite.
International audience
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