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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.
L. E. Beghain, F. Hofmann, S. Wilensky
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 27 | Number 1 | January 1967 | Pages 80-84
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE67-A18044
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A pulse of monoenergetic fast neutrons of several nanoseconds duration is used to excite a lead assembly. The neutron decay is measured as a function of assembly size with conventional nanosecond time-of-flight equipment. The neutron detector is biased to eliminate all nonelasticly scattered neutrons. A theoretical relationship has been developed by Paik which relates the assembly size to the measured decay constant. The nonelastic cross section appears as a parameter in Paik's theory and can be chosen to give the best fit to the experimental data. Decay constants were measured at 2.1 and 1.7 MeV for lead assemblies 20-in. wide x 20-in. high and thicknesses from 1 to 8 in. Paik's theory assumes the establishment of an asymptotic spacial decay mode. This assumption was verified by measuring the neutron decay at various positions of the assembly. The results show that it takes the order of 10 to 15 nsec to establish a spacial mode. This method has been used to measure the total nonelastic cross section for lead at 2.1 and 1.7 MeV.