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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.
E. L. Alfonso, A. A. Clark, D. A. Steinman, R. B. Stephens
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 59 | Number 1 | January 2011 | Pages 116-120
Technical Paper | Nineteenth Target Fabrication Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A11512
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Equation-of-state experiments using VISAR require the refractive index of undoped glow discharge polymer (GDP) and Ge-doped GDP at 532-nm-wavelength light. The index was measured with two different techniques. The first technique used measurements of pulsed laser reflections off a GDP foil suspended in refractive index fluid standards. Fluids with different indices were replaced until minimum reflection was achieved; this occurred at the matching index of the fluid and GDP film. The index of the correct matching fluid (or fluid mixture) was measured with an Abbé refractometer to produce nD (the refractive index at sodium D line, 589 nm) and was corrected for wavelength using manufacturer-supplied Cauchy equation coefficients. The second technique used interferometry to measure fringe shift over GDP and Ge-GDP bumps when submerged in various refractive index fluid standards. The fringe shift was minimized when matching the indices of the fluid and film. The refractive indices at 532 nm were 1.563 and 1.570 for undoped GDP and Ge-doped GDP, respectively.