Assessing Lanthanum-Bromide Detectors for Safeguards Applications

Major detector technologies currently being used for gamma-ray spectroscopy in safeguards applications include systems based on sodium iodide (NaI), cadmium-zinc-telluride (CZT), cadmium-telluride (CdTe), and high-purity germanium (HPGe) crystals. Recently, a new scintillation detector based on a lanthanum bromide (LaBr3) crystal has become commercially available. The declared benefits of this new detector technology include higher resolution and improved efficiency compared with similarly configured NaI-based systems. Both detector systems offer the advantage of room-temperature operation. This paper describes the results of a study assessing the safeguards applicability and advantages for isotopic and quantitative analyses of uranium using the LaBr3-based detector, as well as an investigation into the general operating characteristics of the LaBr3-based detector. The results are compared with those from a widely used NaI-based detector system (Canberra's Inspector-1000 multichannel analyzer) operated under similar environmental conditions and hardware configuration, using commercially available software packages (NaIGEM and Genie-2000).