https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-024-05417-3
Regular Article
Calibration HPGe detector using IAEA-U source for CBRNe
1
National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, Via di Vigna Murata, 00143, Rome, Rome, Italy
2
Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering, University of Pisa, L.go Lucio Lazzarino, 56122, Pisa, PI, Italy
a
debora.siqueiranascimento@ingv.it
Received:
31
March
2024
Accepted:
1
July
2024
Published online:
25
July
2024
Detecting and preventing the illicit movement of radioactive materials within a country is crucial, requiring the identification of radiologic anomalies against the normal radiation background. High-purity germanium (HPGe) detectors, known for their precision and sensitivity, have become popular for analyzing radioactive materials in CBRNe scenarios. This study focused on calibrating an HPGe detector for CBRNe applications, using gamma-ray spectra from an IAEA-U reference source. Energy calibration involved identifying peaks in the spectra and creating a calibration curve for energy and channel number data. Efficiency calibration, determined using the known activity of the source, revealed a linear relationship between energy and detector response. Over four years, systematic efficiency calibrations showed a deviation of only 3% well below the recommended limit of 5%. These findings underscore the reliability of the system as a reference spectrometry method for accurate detection of radioactive materials.
Andrea Chierici, Riccardo Ciolini, Stefano Chiappini, Francesco d’Errico and Massimo Chiappini have contributed equally to this work.
© The Author(s) 2024
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