Computational evaluation of natural europium irradiation for HPGe detector calibration using MATLAB software

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Qom, Qom, Iran

2 Nuclear Fuel Cycle Research School, Nuclear Science and Technology Research Institute, Tehran, Iran

3 Reactor and Nuclear Safety Research School, Nuclear Science and Technology Research Institute, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

In order to use gamma spectroscopy to identify samples with unknown composition, its energy scale must first be calibrated using a specific source. Radionuclides with specific gamma ray energies are commonly used in HPGe detector calibration for gamma spectroscopy. In the meantime, europium-152 and europium-154 radionuclides can be used as a suitable option for HPGe detector energy calibration due to their characteristics such as suitable energy range and long half-life. These radionuclides can be produced through a direct method by irradiating natural europium. In order to prevent environmental pollution, the release of radioactive substances and also to reduce consumption costs, before irradiating the sample and production, the process of optimization and evaluation of possible production products is carried out in order to obtain the output with the best efficiency and performance. For this purpose, in this study, the theoretical calculation was done by solving the differential equations of natural europium decay chains using MATLAB software. In this study, the amount of activity of the main products and the impurities produced due to the irradiation of 1 mg of natural Europium for the duration of irradiation of 7 days and cooling for 30 days was analyzed and investigated. The results showed that the percentage of produced impurities compared to the main products at the end of the cooling process is about 1%, which is insignificant and can be ignored.

Keywords

References

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