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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.
S. Tassan
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 26 | Number 2 | October 1966 | Pages 271-276
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE66-A28169
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Thermal spectrum measurements in 1% enriched uranium, 0.387-in. diam rod lattices, light water moderated, have been performed by the lutetium activation method in order to test the usefulness of this technique in not-well-thermalized lattices. Dysprosium-164 and 175Lu were used as reference thermal-neutron detectors. The experimental results are presented as the average values of the normalized (lattice/Maxwellian) activation ratios of 176Lu/Dy and 176Lu/ 175Lu with the pertinent cadmium-ratios, in the fuel and in the moderator over the H2O/U range from 1:1 to 4:1. The agreement with the results of a calculation performed using the THERMOS code is satisfactory. It is concluded that the 176Lu/Dy set appears to be adequate for the thermal spectrum analysis of light-water-moderated lattices, while the 175Lu/Dy set can provide rather accurate integral data for the epithermal component of the neutron spectrum.