Development of Monte Carlo code for coincidence prompt gamma-ray neutron activation analysis

Prompt Gamma-Ray Neutron Activation Analysis (PGNAA) offers a non-destructive, relatively rapid on-line method for determination of elemental composition of bulk and other samples. However, PGNAA has an inherently large background. These backgrounds are primarily due to the presence of the neutron excitation source. It also includes neutron activation of the detector and the prompt gamma rays from the structure materials of PGNAA devices. These large backgrounds limit the sensitivity and accuracy of PGNAA.; Since most of the prompt gamma rays from the same element are emitted in coincidence, a possible approach for further improvement is to change the traditional PGNAA measurement technique and introduce the gamma-gamma coincidence technique. It is well known that the coincidence techniques can eliminate most of the interference backgrounds and improve the signal-to-noise ratio. A new Monte Carlo code, CEARCPG has been developed at CEAR to simulate gamma-gamma coincidence spectra in PGNAA experiment. Compared to the other existing Monte Carlo code CEARPGA I and CEARPGA II, a new algorithm of sampling the prompt gamma rays produced from neutron capture reaction and neutron inelastic scattering reaction, is developed in this work. All the prompt gamma rays are taken into account by using this new algorithm. Before this work, the commonly used method is to interpolate the prompt gamma rays from the pre-calculated gamma-ray table. This technique works fine for the single spectrum. However it limits the capability to simulate the coincidence spectrum. The new algorithm samples the prompt gamma rays from the nucleus excitation scheme. The primary nuclear data library used to sample the prompt gamma rays comes from ENSDF library.; Three cases are simulated and the simulated results are benchmarked with experiments. The first case is the prototype for ETI PGNAA application. This case is designed to check the capability of CEARCPG for single spectrum simulation. The second case and the third case are designed for coincidence simulation. CEARCPG is also applied to optimize the design of coincidence PGNAA device. Additionally, a new coincidence PGNAA application is also proposed in this work. The possible extensions of this code are also discussed.; The funding of this work is provided by the Center for Engineering Application of Radioisotopes (CEAR) at North Carolina State University (NCSU) and Nuclear Engineering Education Research.