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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.
Noel Corngold
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 102 | Number 1 | May 1989 | Pages 114-118
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE89-A23635
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The time-dependent slowing down of neutrons in noncapturing media depends in an important way on how the energy-dependent mean-free-time between scatterings behaves as E → 0. For example, if the mean-free-time decreases, i.e., ν∑s increases, as any positive power of E, the integrated density of neutrons does not remain constant in time. This anomalous behavior is discussed, noting both analogies in other physical processes and early references to the phenomenon of “nonconservation.” The analysis uses some unfamiliar solutions for slowing down in hydrogen, when the cross section has power-law variation; however, the general discussion is not limited to the equal mass case.