• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.17 no.7
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• pp.1075-1089
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• 2023

Nuclear forensics is an essential part of nuclear material control and nuclear non-proliferation verification. Radiochronometry for nuclear forensics is used to estimate the timing of refinement and production of nuclear materials based on decay chain characteristics and the Bateman equation. The results of radiochronometry have uncertainties because the decay constant and number of nuclides are statistics derived from analyses or repeated experiments and involve uncertainties. The aim of this study was to develop an uncertainty calculation algorithm by performing computational simulation to overcome the limitations of the existing uncertainty calculation method for radiochronometry based on the Bateman equation. The results of the proposed uncertainty calculation algorithm were comparable to those of the existing method. The algorithm allowed for more than two generations of uncertainty calculations and mitigated the underestimation of the decay constant during the uncertainty calculation.