  This work presents a study on the fundamental aspects of a reliable gold
determination in voluminous mineral samples by Neutron Activation Analysis,
using a Linear Particle Accelerator as a source of irradiation and a single
detector as a detection system. The report includes i) an evaluation of the
detection efficiency of the system, particularly the evaluation of the
geometric efficiency in samples with significant volumes (with approximate
volumes from 20 to 30 cm3); ii) a few methods for the calculation of the gamma
ray self attenuation in the sample; iii) some gold in-homogeneity tests in the
sample; iv) several validation calculations obtained with the MCNP code - the
complete system was modeled with this program. This group of results has
produced a gamma-spectrometry protocol for this determination, in order to
obtain accurately the gold concentration in mineral samples this study was
required by a legal bureau to determine the gold abundance in a Patagonian
small deposit. According to the high quality of the results obtained from the
process of characterization of this method, it is concluded that this gold
analysis would be obtained with an accuracy similar than the one provided by
the usual NAA using a reactor, in small samples exactitude values around few %.
