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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. E. Ragan III, G. F. Auchampaugh, A. Hemmendinger, M. G. Silbert
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 61 | Number 1 | September 1976 | Pages 33-39
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE76-A28458
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A benchmark measurement of the neutron leakage spectrum from a pulsed 38-kg uranium (93.5% 235U) sphere has been made using time-of-flight techniques. The sphere had a multiplication of ∼11 for 14-MeV neutrons, and a neutron hold-up time of ∼40 nsec. The centrally located source of 14.1 ± 0.8-MeV neutrons, produced by bombarding a tritium gas target with pulses of low-energy deuterons, was isotropic to ±7.7%. Neutrons in the 0.180- to 16.0-MeV energy range were detected at the end of a 39-m flight path by an Ne-213 liquid scintillator employing pulse-shape discrimination. The detector efficiency was measured over this same energy range using monoenergetic neutrons from the T(p,n) T(d,n), and D(d,n) reactions. The measured neutron flux as a function of energy is compared with the results of Monte Carlo calculations performed with the MCN code. Uranium cross sections from ENDF/B-IV and an older set from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory were used in these calculations. The results calculated using the ENDF/B-IV cross sections are in good agreement with the measurements, especially in the 1- to 6-MeV energy region where the uncertainties in both the calculated and experimental results are the smallest.