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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.
Alvin Shapiro, Warren F. Stubbins
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 45 | Number 1 | July 1971 | Pages 47-51
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE71-A20344
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The photofission yields of 238Pu and 239Pu were measured up to 11.5 MeV with the University of Cincinnati betatron. Corona discharge spark detectors were used to detect the fission fragments from isotopically pure foils in the presence of the very high alpha-particle activity of the plutonium. The photofission cross sections were deduced from the yields by both the Penfold-Leiss procedure and Cook's least-structure analysis. They show the onset of the giant resonance. The cross section for 238Pu at 7.5 MeV is 28 ± 5 mb and 21 ± 4 mb for 239Pu. At 11.0 MeV, the corresponding values were 303 ± 94 mb and 221 ± 69 mb. Between 7.5 and 11 MeV, the 238Pu photofission cross section is ∼35% larger than that for 239Pu.