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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. Gordon, V. E. Schrock, R. N. Stuart, A. J. Kirschbaum
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 17 | Number 4 | December 1963 | Pages 537-546
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE63-A18445
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The distribution of fissions within one fuel pin of a cluster is asymmetrical because of self-shielding and neutron streaming phenomena. An implicit solution of the integral form of the Boltzmann equation indicates that, for a given neutron spectrum, this distribution is primarily a function of three dimensionless parameters: (1) pin radius/neutron mean free path in pin material; (2) pin circle radius/pin radius; and (3) pin radius/fuel element radius. The actual distribution was determined experimentally by detector foils and autoradiographic techniques for various seven-pin, cluster type, gas-cooled fuel elements. The experimental fuel pins were fabricated by winding alternate 0.001 in. thick layers of pure aluminum and enriched uranium (93% U235) on a solid core until the desired pin diameter was reached. Seven of these pins, assembled into a fuel element, were irradiated in the thermal column of a research reactor. The layers of uranium and the uranium detector foils (which had been exposed concurrently) were subsequently autoradiographed and the resulting x-ray film optical density measured on a microdensitometer. The detector foils were also counted in a gamma detector, thus providing a key between relative radioactivity and optical density. It was found that the fission distribution within the center pin of the cluster was symmetrical and could be represented by The fission distribution in the outer pins of the cluster was asymmetrical with respect to the pin center but could be represented by Values of the constants in the above equations are correlated by the first two dimensionless parameters given above but appear to be independent of the third.