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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.
K. Ueki, M. Inoue, Y. Maki
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 84 | Number 3 | July 1983 | Pages 271-284
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE83-A17795
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Integral shielding experiments of spent-fuel shipping casks were carried out with a californium source. The measurements of dose rates were performed not only with a cask as designed but also with one having lost its resin shield. The measured neutron and secondary gamma-ray dose rates are compared with the results of Monte Carlo calculations using the next-event surface crossing (NESX) estimation and the usual point detector estimation. Overall, the Monte Carlo-NESX calculation method was found to give better results. The calculated neutron doses from the undamaged cask were in close agreement with the measured values; the agreement was also good in the case of the damaged cask in the radial and axial directions. In particular, the agreement was quite satisfactory at distances up to 100 cm from the cask surface, although the calculated dose rates were a little smaller than the measured values at locations beyond the cask. Nevertheless, the values agreed with the measured ones within a factor of 2. Furthermore, the calculated secondary gamma-ray dose rates using NESX corresponded closely to the measured values for the undamaged cask. With the present knowledge of Monte Carlo techniques, the method could be employed as an effective means of analyzing the radiation shielding of a cask. In addition, the present experimental data can be adopted as a benchmark for cask design.