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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.
U. Malik, L. S. Kothari, A. Kumar
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 81 | Number 1 | May 1982 | Pages 137-143
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE82-A19600
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Neutron diffusion in graphite containing 1/v and non-1/v absorbers has been studied in the diffusion theory approximation using a multigroup (30-group) approach and the neutron scattering kernel proposed earlier by the authors. It is observed that, in this case as in the case of water investigated earlier, the behavior of neutrons in graphite poisoned with gadolinium is different from that in graphite poisoned with samarium or cadmium. To explain the reason for this difference, a hypothetical model for the energy variation of the absorption cross section has been constructed that closely resembles samarium in one limit and goes over to gadolinium in the other. The effect of varying the concentration of non-1/v absorbers on the flux of sub-Bragg and epicold neutrons has been studied for this model, and some interesting results are obtained.