Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology

The precise determination of the activity for each radionuclide in environmental samples requires the self-absorption correction factor. In this research, we derived the self-absorption correction factor for three p-type high purity germanium detectors using the Monte Carlo code MCNPX. These detectors have different characteristics such as crystal diameter, height and size of the core. We compared the calculated full-energy peak efficiency with the experimental value using a standard sample with 1 g/cm3 density and verified the modeling. We simulated the dependency of the full-energy peak efficiency on the 0.3, 0.6, 0.9, 1.0, 1.2 and 1.5 g/cm3 samples and obtained the corresponding self-absorption correction factor. The self-absorption correction factors calculated for the three detectors differ by less than 1% over most of the energy range and sample densities considered. This indicates that the self-absorption correction factors are independent of the crystal characteristics of HPGe detector.

Keywords

Self-absorption correction factor,High purity germanium detector,Monte Carlo