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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. W. Bauer, J. D. Anderson, S. M. Grimes, D. A. Knapp, V. A. Madsen
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 130 | Number 3 | November 1998 | Pages 348-360
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE98-A2011
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A companion paper presented arguments that support the applicability of a simple Ramsauer model to describe neutron total cross sections. Such a model yields a simple equation for the energy dependence of the cross section of a given nucleus and also allows extrapolation to nuclei of other A values. Fits of the Ramsauer form to very precise total cross sections recently measured over an extended energy range are presented. Very good fits are obtained for neutron energies between 6 and 60 MeV, suggesting that this approach will be useful for estimating cross sections in cases where experimental data are unavailable. Extension of this model to 120 MeV was only moderately successful.