Characterization system for germanium detectors dedicated to gamma spectroscopy applied to nuclear waste

CEA-Valduc, which belongs to the Military Application Division of CEA (CEA-DAM), produces some radioactive waste (mainly alpha emitters). Legislation requires producers to sort their waste by activity and type of isotopes, and to package them in order to forward them to the appropriate reprocessing or storage facility. Our lab LMDE (Laboratoire de Mesures sur Déchets nucléaires et Expertise) is in charge of the characterization of the majority of waste produced by CEA-Valduc. Among non-destructive methods to characterize a radioactive object, gamma-spectroscopy is one of the most efficient. We present to this conference the method we use to characterize nuclear waste and the system we developed to characterize our germanium detectors.