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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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No impact from Savannah River radioactive wasps
The news is abuzz with recent news stories about four radioactive wasp nests found at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The site has been undergoing cleanup operations since the 1990s related to the production of plutonium and tritium for defense purposes during the Cold War. Cleanup activities are expected to continue into the 2060s.
Felix C. Difilippo
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 99 | Number 1 | May 1988 | Pages 28-35
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE88-A23542
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The source of correlation for the signals from detectors in the presence of a stochastic neutron field is analyzed for a variety of circumstances. A general methodology, based on a master equation approach, is compared with the Langevin/Schottky method with the result that there is consistency if the detection process is included in detail. For cases where the detector removes the detected neutron, the only sources of correlation are elementary processes that produce more than one neutron; consequently, the Schottky prescription for the noise equivalent source must be corrected accordingly. An additional term because of the finite electronic resolution is also found and added to the noise equivalent source. Because of the relevance of the subject to the theory of the 252Cf source noise method to measure reactivities, the general results are applied to interpret a recently performed experiment with this type of source.