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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.
W. N. McElroy, S. Berg, T. B. Crockett, R. J. Tuttle
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 36 | Number 1 | April 1969 | Pages 15-27
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE69-A18853
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A multiple foil activation iterative method has been used to experimentally determine neutron flux spectra in various types of neutron environments. The method involves irradiation of a set of different foil detectors, measurement of resultant activities, and adjustment of a spectrum selected as an initial approximation to obtain a good-fit solution for a set of simultaneous activation integral equations. A computer code, SAND-II, is used to obtain this solution. Spectra from thermal and fast reactors and from beam sources have been measured. In each experiment, a set of more than ten foil detectors, encompassing low- and high-energy neutron-induced reactions, was irradiated and used as input to SAND-II. Solutions obtained are compared with diffusion, transport, or Monte Carlo calculations or with spectrometer measurements. It is concluded that the multiple foil activation iterative method is an important adjunct to calculational and neutron spectrometer techniques used to determine neutron flux spectra.