Speaker
Description
Current fieldable spectroscopy techniques often use single detector systems heavily impacted by interferences from intense background radiation fields. These effects result in low-confidence measurements that can lead to misinterpretation of the collected spectrum. To help improve interpretation of the fission products and short-lived radionuclides produced in a composite sample, a coincidence-$\gamma$ database is being developed in support of a robust portable $\gamma$/$X$-ray coincidence detector system concurrently under development at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for in-field deployment. Hitherto, no database exists containing coincident $\gamma/\gamma$ and $\gamma/X$-ray branching ratios on an absolute scale that will greatly enhance isotopic identification for in-field applications.
As part of this project, software has been developed to parse all radioactive-decay data sets from the Evaluated Nuclear Structure Data File (ENSDF) archive to enable translation into more useful eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) formats that more readily support query-based data manipulation. The coincident database described in this work is the first of its kind and contains coincidence $\gamma/\gamma$, $\gamma/X$-ray, and $\gamma/< particle >$ branching ratios (where $< particle >$ = $\alpha$, $\beta^{-}$, $\beta^{+}$, $\epsilon$) and their corresponding uncertainties, together with auxiliary metadata associated with each decay data set. Both XML and JSON formats provide a convenient and portable means of data storage that can be imported into analysis frameworks with relatively low overhead allowing for meaningful comparison with measured data.