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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.
R. L. French, J. H. Price, and K. W. Tompkins
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 27 | Number 2 | February 1967 | Pages 360-366
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE67-A18275
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Four simple enclosure shields were exposed to fallout from Shot Small Boy of Operation Sunbeam. Gamma-ray measurements were made both inside and outside the enclosures to determine time-dependent and time-integrated dose transmission factors (dose inside divided by dose outside). The analysis of the experiment consisted of calculating similar factors and comparing with the measured data. Monte Carlo procedures were used to determine the radiation distribution incident upon the shields and to compute the radiation penetration into the shields. Fallout gamma-ray spectra resulting from several different theoretical and experimental investigations were used in calculating the dose transmission factors. The calculated dose transmission factors were found to be consistently higher than the measured factors by as much as a factor of 2, depending upon the particular source term. After investigating several possible causes, it was concluded that the discrepancy was probably the cumulative effect of a deficiency of low-energy photons in the calculated source terms, omission of support structure inside the enclosure shields in the penetration calculations, and of neglecting the effects of ground roughness in the calculations.