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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.
F. B. Simpson, W. H. Burgus, J. E. Evans, H. W. Kirby
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 12 | Number 2 | February 1962 | Pages 243-249
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE62-A26064
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The total cross section for Pa231 was measured from 0.01 ev to 2 kev, with the use of the Materials Testing Reactor fast chopper with resolutions from 0.040 to 2.0 µsec/meter. The Breit-Wigner resonance parameters have been obtained for the resonances below 11.0 ev. These measurements were made with samples prepared from 0.558 gm of Pa2O5. Weighting the level spacings inversely as 2J + 1 gives the average observed level spacings per spin state of 0.72 and 1.2 ev. This is one of the smallest spacings observed in any isotope. The average parameters give a value of 0.63 × 10−4 for the s-wave neutron strength function . A linear least squares fit to the data between 0.015 and 0.03 ev gives a value of 211 ± 2 barns for the thermal cross section. The resonance absorption integral (for neutrons with energies > 0.1 ev) is 1560 ± 55 barns, with a contribution of approximately 65% from the 0.396 ev resonance.