Feasibility studies of a carbon/oxygen logging tool for evaluating the CO/sub 2/ content of the medium in nuclear device containment

The feasibility of using oil-well bore-hole logging techniques for assaying the carbonate content of a potential shot site has been investigated. The procedure makes use of the detection of the 4439-keV ..gamma.. ray of carbon and the 6130-keV ..gamma.. ray of oxygen produced by the inelastic scattering of 14-MeV neutrons in the bore-hole medium. For the needs of the containment program, a sensitivity of detection of CO/sub 2/ to less than or equal to 0.02 weight fraction must be achieved. Laboratory measurements indicate that only with considerable development effort could a tool be made that would come close to achieving this goal.