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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.
W. K. Foell, T. J. Connolly
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 26 | Number 3 | November 1966 | Pages 399-417
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE66-A17363
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Measurements of resonance absorption of neutrons were performed on single-absorber systems containing 238U and 232Th individually, and in binary systems containing mixtures of these two absorbers. The single-absorber measurements were made over a wide range of absorber concentrations and served as a check on the adequacy of resonance absorber calculations and/or resonance parameter data. The binary systems provided a situation in which the spacing of resonances is closer than in a single absorber, thus making questionable the usual assumption of separability of resonances. The measurements were performed by means of static reactivity techniques in the Advanced Reactivity Measurement Facility (ARMF-II) at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho. The calculated and measured values for the uranium dioxide systems are in good agreement over the wide range of absorber concentrations. The experimental results for the thorium dioxide samples are consistent with work by other experimenters but are in quantitative disagreement with resonance integrals calculated from a recent compilation of resonance parameters. The measured resonance integrals of the binary mixtures were smaller than the values predicted from the measurements on the single-absorber systems, indicating an interference effect of approximately 3% in the samples of highest absorber concentration. Calculations performed with a multiresonance version of Nordheim's ZUT code underestimated this interference effect between absorbers.