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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.
Sherif S. Nafee
Nuclear Technology | Volume 172 | Number 2 | November 2010 | Pages 211-219
Technical Paper | Radiation Measurements and Instrumentation | doi.org/10.13182/NT10-A10906
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The calibration of gamma-ray cylindrical detectors is often required in the analysis of high or low environmental samples and the homogenously distributive nuclear waste drums. Therefore, a new analytical simulation method is proposed in the present work to calculate the full-energy peak efficiencies of high-purity germanium cylindrical detectors using extended sources of low and high volumes. The sources were mounted at three different positions with respect to the detector's axis (coaxial, parallel, and perpendicular), labeled as Position 1, Position 2, and Position 3, respectively. The self-attenuation and the coincidence summing effects at low source-detector distance are also included in the algorithm. A remarkable agreement between the measured and the calculated efficiencies is achieved with discrepancies <4% for the first two positions and between 5 and 7% for the last one.