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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.
Yukio Sakamoto, Shun-ichi Tanaka, Yoshiko Harima
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 100 | Number 1 | September 1988 | Pages 33-42
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE88-A29012
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The values of buildup factors for a specific energy above K edges and penetration distance vary smoothly with respect to atomic number. An interpolation of buildup factors for an arbitrary elemental material is examined using geometric-progression (G-P) parameters for an equivalent atomic number. The G-P parameters are data fitted to the proposed American National Standard buildup factor data compilation of 17 elements from beryllium to molybdenum and are calculated by the moments method. The data for iron, molybdenum, tin, lanthanum, gadolinium, tungsten, lead, and uranium, including bremsstrahlung and fluorescence, are calculated by the PALLAS code. Various tests over a wide range of atomic numbers confirm that values of the buildup factors generated by interpolated G-P parameters can reproduce the basic data calculated directly over the full range of energy with an accuracy within a few percent. The values of equivalent atomic number for mixture materials, such as water, air, concrete, and lead glass of 4.36 density, are determined from a ratio of scattering cross section to the total attenuation coefficient. The buildup factors for these materials calculated using the G-P parameters, interpolated by the equivalent atomic number, are in good agreement with the basic data, although a deviation is observed above 3 MeV for the buildup factors for lead glass.