SMuK 2023 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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AGA: Arbeitsgruppe Physik und Abrüstung

AGA 4: Nuclear Weapons and the Atmosphere

AGA 4.3: Vortrag

Donnerstag, 23. März 2023, 15:05–15:25, HSZ/0002

Test of a new radioxenon monitoring system for verification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty - What can be gained from higher sensitivities and shorter sampling periods? — •Sofia Brander¹, Sandra Baur¹, Roman Krais¹, J. Ole Ross², and Andreas Bollhöfer¹ — ¹Federal Office for Radiation Protection, Rosastr. 9, 79098 Freiburg — ²Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, GeoZentrum Hannover, Stilleweg 2, 30655 Hannover

For the verification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) an international monitoring system (IMS) of radioxenon measurement stations has been established. 26 of 40 planned noble gas stations now accommodate systems that automatically collect and analyze a minimum of 1 air sample per day for the nuclides Xe-133, Xe-131m, Xe-133m and Xe-135 in order to detect a possible nuclear weapons test. A new generation of systems, capable of shorter sampling cycles and lower detection limits, is being tested and implemented into the IMS. The German Federal Office for Radiation Protection tested one of these systems, Xenon International, from July 2021 to April 2022 at radionuclide station RN33 on Mount Schauinsland near Freiburg. The obtained activity concentrations are consistent with data from the current operational IMS system SPALAX at RN33, with sensitivities up to one order of magnitude higher for Xe-131m, Xe-133m and Xe-135.

In this talk, I will investigate multiple isotope detections and unusual single detections and explore the benefits of 6h time resolution considering source location capabilities via atmospheric transport modeling.