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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.
L. W. Weston, J. H. Todd
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 61 | Number 3 | November 1976 | Pages 356-365
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE76-A26921
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The 241Am neutron absorption cross section, which is predominantly capture, has been measured from 0.01-eV to 370-keV neutron energy. The Oak Ridge Electron Linear Accelerator was used as the source of pulsed neutrons. Resonance parameters have been derived for the data up to 50 eV. The capture gamma-ray detector used was the “total energy detector,” which is a modification of the Moxon-Rae detector. This detector required that the events be weighted by their pulse height in the detector and that the net efficiency of the detector be low. The cross section was normalized at thermal-neutron energies (0.02 to 0.03 eV), and the shape of the neutron flux was measured relative to the 10B(n, α) cross section up to 2 keV and relative to the 6Li(n, α) cross section at higher neutron energies. The results of the measurement indicate a lower cross section (∼25%) between 0.3 and 100 eV than has been previously indicated and an appreciably higher cross section (by 100% at 100 keV) from 20 to 370 keV.