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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.
V. Spiegel
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 53 | Number 3 | March 1974 | Pages 326-327
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE74-A23358
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The effective half-life of 252Cf has been determined as 2.638 ± 0.007 yr. The method utilized the ratio of the manganese activity induced in a manganous-sulfate bath by a 252Cf spontaneous-fission neutron source and the National Bureau of Standards photo-neutron source to measure the change in emission rate of the 252Cf source over a period of 1.77 half-lives. The data were corrected for the activity of radium (1622-yr half-life) in the photoneutron source (-0.2%) and for the competing neutron production from 250Cf.
