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Breaking ground on a new approach to construction
The drive to Kairos Power’s reactor demonstration site in Oak Ridge, Tenn., is not only scenic—it’s historic. Nearly 85 years ago, roughly 30,000 construction workers transformed orchards and farmland into a key Manhattan Project site. Depending on your route, you may pass by one of the three gatehouses that were once military checkpoints controlling access to Atomic Energy Commission production facilities.
H. L. Pai, D. G. Andrews
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 76 | Number 3 | December 1980 | Pages 323-330
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE80-A21322
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The simple statistical model statement relating the yield YP of fission fragments to the effective neutron binding energy , namely YP α exp(−/T), can be used as a basis for parallel developments, one leading to the well-known empirical delayed-neutron statement where Y is the number of delayed neutrons per fission. Repeating the development for prompt neutron emission leads to the analogous result where is the prompt neutrons per fission. This semi-empirical result implies that a semi-logarithmic experimental plot of against (3Z - A) should be a family of straight lines. Currently available experimental results justify this prediction. The theoretical precision of this semi-empirical formula is estimated to be ±10% or better, depending mainly on the part and shape of the fission yield-mass curve taken into account. The existence of the above empirical and semi-empirical formulas strongly suggests that the yield of fission neutrons, as well as their spectrum, can be calculated by using the standard statistical model with non-adjustable parameters.