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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. C. Lloyd, R. A. Libby, E. D. Clayton
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 82 | Number 3 | December 1982 | Pages 325-331
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE82-A19393
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Experiments were performed with a 122-cm-diam sphere to determine criticality of aqueous solutions of plutonium in a system having low-neutron leakage. The plutonium in the chemical form of Pu(NO3)4 had a 240Pu content of 2.52 wt%. The critical-sphere concentration obtained in this experiment was analyzed along with data from eight additional critical experiments to evaluate the minimum critical concentration for plutonium. The limiting critical concentration was determined to be 7.62 g Pu/ℓ, for Pu(NO3)4 without excess acid and 7.59 g Pu/ℓ for a 239Pu-water mixture. From these data, the Maxwellian-averaged thermal value of the number of fission neutrons emitted per neutron absorbed by 239Pu, eta, was determined to be 2.056 ± 0.037. The value at 2200 m/s is 2.100 ±0.041.