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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.
J. C. Hopkins, B. C. Diven
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 12 | Number 2 | February 1962 | Pages 169-177
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE62-A26055
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The ratio of neutron capture to fission cross sections, α, has been measured for U233, U235, and Pu239 at 9 incident neutron energies from 30 kev to 1000 kev. A pulsed and collimated neutron beam is passed through a target placed at the center of a large, cadmium-loaded, liquid scintillator. Capture and fission events are detected by means of their prompt gamma rays; elastic and inelastic scattering events are discarded because of their smaller pulse height. Fission is identified by the delayed pulses produced by capture in the scintillator of the fission neutrons. Corrections are applied for the fission events not followed by delayed neutron pulses and for the effect of background counts. This procedure yields values of 1 + α to an accuracy of 1 or 2%.