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Chernobyl at 40 years: Looking back at Nuclear News
Sunday, April 26, at 1:23 a.m. local time will mark 40 years since the most severe nuclear accident in history: the meltdown of Unit 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union.
In the ensuing four decades, countless books, documentaries, articles, and conference sessions have examined Chernobyl’s history and impact from various angles. There is a similar abundance of outlooks in the archives of Nuclear News, where hundreds of scientists, advocates, critics, and politicians have shared their thoughts on Chernobyl over the years. Today, we will take a look at some highlights from the pages of NN to see how the story of Chernobyl evolved over the decades.
S. E. Lee, Y. Hatano, M. Hara, M. Matsuyama
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 3 | April 2020 | Pages 327-332
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1711855
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nondestructive measurement of tritium (T) content in solid materials is important for safe and cost-effective disposal of contaminated wastes, and beta-ray induced X-ray spectrometry (BIXS) has been developed for this purpose. A common way to obtain depth profiles of T in solids using BIXS is to perform simulation of X-ray spectra for assumed depth profiles and find a profile giving the best agreement with observation. A detailed understanding of attenuation of low-energy X-rays (≤18.6 keV) by detector components such as a window material is required for interpretation of measured spectra and simulation. In this study, BIXS spectra of a tungsten reference sample with known T depth profile were measured using two different semiconductor detectors and simulated using the Monte Carlo simulation toolkit Geant4. In the low-energy region (<2 keV), the difference in internal structure resulted in a noticeable difference in the BIXS spectra. The disagreement between the measured and the simulated spectra was also significant at <2 keV. Nevertheless, at >2 keV, the BIXS spectra were insensitive to the internal structure of the detector, and the simulated spectra agreed well with the measured ones. The mechanism underlying the difference in the low-energy region was discussed.