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Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
Yoshiko Harima, Yukio Sakamoto, Naohiro Kurosawa, Akinao Shimizu
Nuclear Technology | Volume 168 | Number 3 | December 2009 | Pages 861-866
Shielding | Special Issue on the 11th International Conference on Radiation Shielding and the 15th Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division (PART 3) / Radiation Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A9319
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The geometric-progression (G-P) formula can accurately reproduce buildup factor data up to depths of 40 mean free paths (mfp) within a few percent. This formula was improved to apply to depths up to 100 mfp, using the buildup factor data of Shimizu et al. (2004) calculated with the Invariant Embedding method.The behavior of the K parameter as a function of distance was examined, and a new formula was introduced from the depth of Xm ([approximately]40 mfp). The fitting parameters were determined using a minimizing procedure of the maximum fractional deviation (MMD). Within some sets of parameters determined by the MMD fit, one set of parameters was selected that realized the interpolation of the buildup factor with regard to energy, using interpolated G-P parameters. Consequently, discrete buildup factor data were converted to continuous data with regard to both energy and distance.