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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. L. French
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 19 | Number 2 | June 1964 | Pages 151-157
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE64-A28903
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A method has been developed for predicting the effect of an air/ground interface on the fast-neutron flux or dose at large distances from a point isotropic source of neutrons in air. The method yields numerical values for functions f(HS) and f(HD) that may be used to express the fast-neutron intensity as a function of source height HS, receiver height HD, and source-receiver separation distance R, in terms of the corresponding infinite air intensity I(R). Thus I(HS,HD,R) = f(HS)f(HD)I(R). The method is called the “First-Last Collision Model” because it is based on the influence of the ground upon the distribution of “first” collisions of neutrons about the source and of “last” collisions about the receiver. Generalized numerical results have been computed, and means have been developed for applying these results to specific cases* Comparisons of these results with those derived from Monte Carlo calculations, and from experiments performed at the ORNL Tower Shielding Facility and the Nevada Test Site indicate that the first-last collision model predicts the fraction of the infinite air intensity within 5 per cent in almost all cases.