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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.
R. E. Slovacek, D. S. Cramer, E. B. Bean, J. R. Valentine, R. W. Hockenbury, R. C. Block
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 62 | Number 3 | March 1977 | Pages 455-462
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE77-A26984
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The 238U(n,f) cross section has been measured from 3 eV to ≃ 100 keV with the Rensselaer Intense Neutron Spectrometer, a 75-ton lead slowing down spectrometer at the Gaerttner Laboratory at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Four fission ionization chambers containing a total of ≃ 0.8 g of 238U (4.1 ppm 235U) were used for the measurements. The fission widths of the 6.67-, 20.9-, and 36.8-eV resonances were measured as (10 ± 1), (58 ± 9), and (12 ±2) neV, respectively. By combining these fission results and published resonance parameters, the 238U thermal fission cross-section contribution from positive energy resonances was determined to be (2.7 ± 0.3) µb. The resonance fission integral from 0.4 eV to 100 keV was determined to be (1.30 ±0.15) mb.