Improving Effective Mass Estimations in Pu-Metal Annuli

Abstract

Determining the effective mass of 240 Pu in a plutonium metal item can be achieved through a number of destructive and non-destructive assay techniques. However, these techniques have one or more shortcomings. These include the need for large quantities of plutonium, long measurement time, or lack of sufficient accuracy. While efforts have been made to mitigate these issues by estimating 240 Pu quantities through neutron coincidence counting techniques, these estimates are subject to systematic bias, and their estimates are not well characterized when other factors of the annulus’ physical form and composition are accounted for. In this work, we expand upon these non-destructive assay techniques via the implementation of random forest machine learning models, which produce correction functions that augment and improve the effective mass estimates derived from classical leakage multiplication, singles, doubles, and triples multiplicity counting equations.