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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.
F. Rahn, H. Camarda, G. Hacken, W. W. Havens, Jr., H. Liou, J. Rainwater, M. Slagowitz, S. Wynchank
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 47 | Number 3 | March 1972 | Pages 372-375
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE72-A22424
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Transmission measurements on natural iron samples were carried out at the Nevis Synchrocyclotron to determine the minima in the total cross section occurring between 10 and 500 keV. We used the NVS 200-m time-of-flight system and obtained an effective fwhm resolution of ≈0.6 nsec/m for these measurements. Values of the total cross section at the minima points were determined by the transmission-of-the-difference method for four thick samples ranging in inverse thickness (1/n) = 1.53 to 0.38 b/atom. Our value of the cross section at the important minimum at 24.4 keV is (0.51 ± 0.02) b. This value is close to the one appearing in the KEDAK data file (0.557 b), but considerably higher than the values in ENDF/B-I (0.15 b) and ENDF/B-II (0.285 b) files. Our value is in agreement with recent integral spectral measurements at RPI which show a preference for a value close to the KEDAK evaluation.