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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.
Donald Strominger and Gordon Schlesinger
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 21 | Number 4 | April 1965 | Pages 441-450
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE65-A18788
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Solid-state p-n junction counters have been fabricated to measure fission rates of materials with different fission thresholds. The fission reactions are caused by neutrons varying in energy from thermal energies for U235 to 1.5 MeV for Th232. The data gathered from these solid-state fission counters have been used to compare experimental with calculated fission rates in the AETR cores. The fission counter is assembled by placing an electroplated foil of a fissionable material near a p-n junction detector. An aluminum cap is placed over each detector and foil to form a neat, compact assembly. The resulting counter is small enough to fit inside a reactor with minimum distortion to the neutron spectrum. Fission counters employing Th232, U233, U234, U235, U236, U238, Np237, and Pu239 as the principal fissionable material have been successfully fabricated. These solid-state fission counters have proved reliable instruments to measure neutron fluxes in high gamma-ray fields. True fission events are easily separated from other induced reactions in the counter.