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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.
A. R. Boulogne, J. P. Faraci
Nuclear Technology | Volume 11 | Number 1 | May 1971 | Pages 75-83
Technical Paper | Radioisotope | doi.org/10.13182/NT71-A30903
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Californium-252 makes an intense neutron point source that emits 2.34 × 1012 n/(sec g) through spontaneous fission. Sources are being prepared to investigate the value of this radionuclide for mineral, petroleum, and gas exploration, well logging and hydrology, activation analysis, neutron radiography, and other areas where isotopic neutron sources are used. Sources containing milligram amounts of 252Cf with active volumes of <25 mm3 are being prepared by precipitating and filtering californium oxalate on a small metallic filter, which is in the primary capsule in a totally enclosed apparatus. The oxalate is calcined to 252Cf2O3 before the primary capsule is sealed. These sources are doubly encapsulated under conservative design criteria to prevent leakage of radioactive material because they are used in a wide variety of environmental conditions. The neutron emission rate of the finished sources is within 10% of the desired value. Less than 1% of the 252Cf was lost in the process. Because the practical upper limit for the present capsule design is about ten milligrams of 252Cf, procedures are being developed for preparing sources containing up to several hundreds of milligrams of the isotope.