Patent Number: 
Section: claims

1. A method of absolute nuclear material assay of an unknown source comprising:detecting neutrons emitted from the unknown source, and grouped with respect to time;collecting a number of neutrons within a defined time window to derive neutron multiplet count data;measuring the multiplet count as a function of lifetime and neutron number;iteratively solving a plurality of coupled algebraic equations for five unknown parameters of the source using the first three moments of a fission chain distribution, wherein the parameters comprise mass, multiplication, alpha ratio, detector efficiency, and time constant (lambda);fitting the time constant parameter to the actual time dependence of the moments to reduce the unknown parameters to four parameters of mass, multiplication, alpha ratio, and detector efficiency;comparing truncated data moments representing a measured count distribution with untruncated and truncated theoretical moments representing a model count distribution to provide an estimation of the four parameters and to allow for solution of the remaining three parameters using the first three moments;using the estimation of the four parameters to determine the bias caused by finite sampling error; andadjusting the truncated data moments and the untruncated and truncated theoretical moments to reduce the bias in the measured count distribution and the model count distribution. 2. The method of absolute nuclear material assay of an unknown source of claim 1 further comprising utilizing a random sampling of a count distribution to generate a continuous time-evolving sequence of event-counts by spreading the count distribution in time. 3. The method of absolute nuclear material assay of an unknown source of claim 1 further comprising correcting the first three moments with respect to the impact of instrument dead time on the count distribution of the emitted neutrons. 4. The method of absolute nuclear material assay of an unknown source of claim 1 further comprising using the lifetime (L) to estimate moderator mass around the fissioning material. 5. The method of absolute nuclear material assay of an unknown source of claim 1 further comprising precomputing lookup tables of real-time computed count distributions for comparison to measured data. 6. A method of absolute nuclear material assay of an unknown source, comprising:counting neutrons from the unknown source;collecting a number of neutrons within a defined time window to derive neutron multiplet count data and processing the multiplet count as a function of lifetime and neutron number;iteratively solving a plurality of coupled algebraic equations for five unknown parameters of the source using the first three moments of a fission chain distribution;correcting the first three moments with respect to the impact of instrument dead time on the count distribution of the emitted neutrons;fitting the time constant parameter to the actual time dependence of the moments to reduce the unknown parameters to four parameters of mass, multiplication, alpha ratio, and detector efficiency;comparing truncated data moments representing a measured count distribution with untruncated and truncated theoretical moments representing a model count distribution to provide an estimation of the four parameters and to allow for solution of the remaining three parameters using the first three moments;using the estimation of the four parameters to determine the bias caused by finite sampling error; andadjusting the truncated data moments and the untruncated and truncated theoretical moments to reduce any bias in the measured count distribution and the model count distribution. 7. The method of absolute nuclear material assay of an unknown source of claim 6 wherein said five parameters are mass, multiplication, alpha ratio, efficiency, and time constant. 8. The method of claim 3 further comprising time-tagging the neutron count events as seen during a measurement and creating a fitting algorithm that preferentially weights longer time gates so that short mode effects minimally alter a resulting asymptote of the count distribution, in order to perform the correction of the first three moments with respect to dead time. 9. The method of claim 1 wherein the first moment is a dead-time reduced count rate correction, and a first iteration produces a first estimate of the true count rate and the second and third moments. 10. The method of claim 9 wherein the first estimate of the true count rate and the second and third moments is used to create an estimate of the fourth moment that is used to refine the estimate of the true count rate and second and third moments in subsequent iterative steps until no change is found, at which time the four parameters are determined.