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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.
C. R. Richey, J. D. White, E. D. Clayton, R. C. Lloyd
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 23 | Number 2 | October 1965 | Pages 150-158
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE65-A28139
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Critical experiments were conducted with homogeneous mixtures of PuO2 - polystyrene (H:Pu atomic ratio of 15) containing both 2.2 and 8.0% Pu240. Criticality was determined for a series of Plexiglas reflected rectangular prisms ranging from near cubes, to long columns, and to thin slabs; bare arrays of near-cubic geometry were also studied. Critical thicknesses were 16.09 ± 0.41 and 5.99 ± 0.10 cm, respectively, for the bare and reflected infinite slabs of PuO2-polystyrene containing 2.2% Pu240. Corresponding values for the 8.0% Pu240 mixtures were 18.48 ± 0.41 and 7.38 ± 0.09 cm. The infinite slab thicknesses for an equivalent Pu239-water mixture (H:Pu = 15, ρ = 1.62 g Pu/cm3) were 11.66 ± 0.30 and 4.38 ± 0.08 cm, respectively, for the bare and water-reflected slabs. Corresponding critical radii for infinitely long cylinders were 10.52 ± 0.16 and 6.54 ± 0.14 cm; radii for critical spheres were 13.81 ± 0.16 and 10.40 ± 0.17 cm.