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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.
Charles W. Townley, James E. Howes, Jr., Gilbert E. Raines, Ward S. Diethorn, Duane N. Sttnderman
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 10 | Number 4 | August 1961 | Pages 346-351
doi.org/10.13182/NSE61-A15376
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A radiochemical technique has been developed for the determination of the release rates of short-lived fission gases from fuel specimens during irradiation. Fission-product gases with half-lives ranging from 1.7 sec to 3.9 min were employed in the development of the procedure. These were krypton-89, xenon-137, xenon-140, and xenon-141. The procedure involves the collection and analysis of the solid daughter products of these gases. The gases are swept through a long tube packed with stainless steel mesh, and the daughter products deposit on the mesh as they are formed. The mesh is analyzed radiochemically for the daughter species, strontium-89, cesium-137, barium-140, and cerium-141. From the results of these analyses, the release rates of the parent fission gases may be calculated with a knowledge of the transit time of the gases through the tran and the transport time from the point of release to the trap entrance.