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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.
D. C. Larson, G. L. Morgan
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 75 | Number 2 | August 1980 | Pages 151-158
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE80-A21304
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Differential cross sections for neutron-induced gamma-ray production from sodium have been measured for incident-neutron energies between 0.2 and 20.0 MeV. Gamma rays with energies 0.35 ≤ Eγ ≤ 10.6 MeV were detected with a sodium iodide spectrometer at 125 deg. The data presented are the double-differential cross section, d2σ/dΩdE, for coarse intervals in incident-neutron energy. The measured results are compared with existing data, with calculations based on multistep Hauser-Feshbach theory, and with a benchmark gamma-ray production measurement performed at the Oak Ridge Tower Shielding Facility (TSF). Average agreement between our measured results and model calculations is within 15%. The cross sections measured at the TSF are typically 30% larger than our results, except for gamma-ray energies between 1.1 and 1.5 MeV where the TSF benchmark predicts a yield 20 times greater than we observe. Results of the present measurement have been incorporated for the gamma-ray production in the Evaluated Nuclear Data File.