Recent Achievements in NAA, PAA, XRF, IBA and AMS Applications for Cultural Heritage Investigations at Nuclear Physics Institute, Řež

Abstract

Five case studies are reported on the use of neutron and photon activation analysis (NAA and PAA, respectively), X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis, ion beam analysis (IBA), and accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) for the elemental characterization or dating of various objects of cultural heritage, such as building materials, pottery, metallic artefacts, ancient decorations, or the remains of historical personalities. The use of the individual techniques or their combination proved a useful, frequently indispensable tool for revealing the provenance of the artefacts, the method and time of their manufacturing, the elucidation of ancient human activities, or the verification of various hypotheses or legends related to the artefacts.

Research Activities at the Police Academy of the Czech Republic in Prague Associated With the Detection and Elimination of CBRN and Other Dangerous Material Threats

“…Neutron irradiation was carried out at a light-water tank-type research nuclear reactor LVR-15 operated by Research Centre Řež. The reactor has a maximal thermal power of 10 MW and a maximal thermal neutron flux in the reactor core of 1•1014 cm−2 s−1 [7]. For short-time irradiation (10 s-3 min), a vertical channel in the corner of the active core equipped with a pneumatic transport system is used to deliver samples in polyethylene (PE) rabbits to the laboratory within 3.5 s. For long-time irradiation (several hours to several days) in Al cans, three vertical channels located in a Be reflector at the outskirts of the active core can be used.…”

Application of Macro X-ray Fluorescence Fast Mapping to Thickness Estimation of Layered Pigments

“…Even though XRF (X-ray fluorescence) is strictly an atomic method, this technique has been developed mostly at research centers for nuclear physics [3,[17][18][19] and it is considered in several programs of the IAEA (International Agency for Atomic Agency) [20,21]. This is due to both technical and historical reasons; indeed, radioactive sources have been used for a long time as X-ray sources in XRF spectrometers, and the detection stage exploits the same technology as Ion Beam Analyses (IBA) for which XRF is often a complementary spectroscopic technique [22].…”