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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. Reed Johnson, Daniel H. Risher, James E. Rogers, William L. Thompson
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 43 | Number 1 | January 1971 | Pages 32-41
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE71-A21243
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Well-collimated beams of thermal-neutron-capture gamma rays from titanium and nickel, having average energies of about 6 and 8 MeV, respectively, were used to measure narrow-beam and total gamma-ray dose attenuation. Slab shields of lead, iron, and concrete were investigated for normal and oblique beam incidence. Total dose measurements were made by traversing an exposure-responsive detector through a plane behind and parallel to the shield. Monte Carlo and moments-method calculations were used to compare analytical and experimental total dose results. Good agreement was found for iron and concrete shields, but experimental results for the lead shield were higher than those predicted by the moments method by a factor of ∼1.2 for 6 MeV and ∼1.5 for 8 MeV. The reason for this disagreement is believed to be primarily bremsstrah-lung produced by energetic secondary electrons slowing down in lead.