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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.
M. B. Chadwick, L. J. Cox, P. G. Young, A.S. Meigooni
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 123 | Number 1 | May 1996 | Pages 17-37
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE96-A24210
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We present an evaluation of the interaction of neutrons with energies between 20 and 100 MeV with carbon nuclei. Our aim is to accurately represent integrated cross sections, inclusive emission spectra, and kerma factors, in a data library for use in radiation transport simulations offast neutron radiotherapy. We apply the Feshbach-Kerman-Koonin-GNASH nuclear model code, which includes Hauser-Feshbach, pre-equilibrium, and direct reaction mechanisms, and use experimental measurements to optimize the calculations. We determine total, elastic, and nonelastic cross sections; angle-energy-correlated emission spectra for light ejectiles with A ≤ 4 and gamma rays; and average energy depositions. Coupled-channel optical model calculations describe the total, elastic, and nonelastic cross sections well. Our results for charged-particle emission spectra agree fairly well with University of California-Davis as well as new Los Alamos National Laboratory and Louvain-la-Neuve measurements. We compare our results with the recent ENDF/B-VI evaluation and argue that some of the exclusive channels between 20 and 32 MeV should be modified. We also compare kerma factors derived from our evaluated cross sections with the measurements, providing an integral benchmark for our work. The evaluated data libraries are available as electronic files.