Rapid Gamma Exploitation

Problem Statement

Determine whether early gamma spectra of post-detonation nuclear fallout can be used to rapidly determine attributes of the device used. Modeling efforts play a key role in assessing the performance of identification techniques.

Technical Approach

The ORNL portion of this work leverages several modeling capabilities:

-Irradiation of fissile materials with ORIGEN -Fallout formation and atmospheric transport with the DELFIC code -Radiation transport and detector response generation with MCNP and GADRAS -inverse optimization techniques to identify the best match for fission type and neutron spectrum with ID-PDet -Quantify sensitivity and uncertainty of results due to nuclear data using SAMPLER and Orsen.

Benefit

Gamma spectra will be available more rapidly than chemical assays from fixed laboratories. This can considerably shorten the timeline to draw conclusions about the device.