ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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.
D. K. Olsen, G. de Saussure, R. B. Perez, E. G. Silver, F. C. Difilippo, R. W. Ingle, H. Weaver
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 62 | Number 3 | March 1977 | Pages 479-501
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE77-A26986
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The transmissions of 0.52- to 4000-eV neutrons through 3.62-, 1.08-, 0.254-, 0.0762-, 0.0254-, 0.0127-, and 0.0036-cm-thick samples of uranium, enriched in the 238U isotope, have been measured at 42 m with a 1.0-mm-thick 6Li glass detector using the Oak Ridge Electron Linear Accelerator pulsed neutron source. To obtain resonance parameters, the seven transmissions of neutrons having energies ranging from 0.52 to 1086.8 eV have been shape-fitted by least-squares analysis to a multilevel Breit-Wigner cross-section formalism with “picket-fence” terms to account for truncation effects. This simultaneous fit yielded a χ2 per degree of freedom near unity. Averaged over this energy range, an s-wave strength function of (0.968 ± 0.036) × 10-4 cm and an effective radius of (0.944 ± 0.005) × 10-12 cm were obtained. In addition, these transmission data yielded an average radiation width of 23.1 ±1.0 meV for the 12 lowest energy s-wave resonances with radiation widths of 23.0 ± 0.8, 22.8 ± 0.8, and 22.9 ± 0.8 meV for the 6.67-, 20.9-, and 36.8-eV resonances, respectively. The derived radiation widths for these three resonances are shown to depend on the cross-section formalism employed. This work suggests that a multilevel formalism with truncation compensation is required to adequately represent the 238U total cross section.