Don Bradley has demonstrated that he is the undisputed heavyweight authority on what is known in the West about the management, or more appropriately "mismanagement," of radioactive materials in the former Soviet Union (FSU). Bradley and his colleagues at Battelle's Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL) for years have been collecting and analyzing nuclear waste and related data of the former Soviet Union for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). This latest book represents an update of Bradley' three volume work, Radioactive Waste Management in the USSR, released between 1990-1992. Behind the Nuclear Curtain is an exceptional piece of work. It now becomes the reference book on the subject. Written primarily for use by nuclear and health physics professionals, Bradley's book is well researched and the data are extensively referenced. There are some 300 tables, figures, and photographs which make it a particularly valuable resource.After an introduction and overview Bradley provides us with a short chapter on waste management agreements between the U.S. and FSU which should have been relegated to an appendix. This is followed by a description of the Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom) and other institutions with nuclear waste management responsibilities. The next 16 chapters review the entire Soviet/Russian nuclear fuel cycle-civil and military from uranium mining to highlevel nuclear waste management. There are separate chapters devoted to the principal plutonium
A portable germanium detector was used to detect gamma-ray emissions from a nuclear warhead aboard the Soviet cruiser Slava. Measurements taken on the missile launch tube indicated the presence of uranium-235 and plutonium-239-the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons. With the use of this equipment, these isotopes probably could have been identified at a distance of 4 meters from the warhead. Such inspections do not reveal detailed information about the design of the warhead.
The reactions pp -» iV* ++ (1238)rc and pn-*N*~~(1238)p at 2.8 GeV/c incident laboratory momentum are analyzed with the Brookhaven National Laboratory 20-in. bubble chamber. Isobar and anti-isobar production differential cross sections and decay angular distributions are compared with the predictions of an absorptive single-pion-exchange model. The absolute values, shapes, and ratios of the cross sections are in good agreement with the theory when the absorptive parameters 71 and 72 are 0.033 and 0.016 for the pn reaction, and 0.057 and 0.019, respectively, for the pp reaction.T HE observed peripherally of reactions producing quasi-two-body final states in particle collisions at high energies indicates the importance of singleparticle-exchange mechanisms. Experimental results for a variety of reactions are in general agreement with the predictions of a single-pion-exchange model in which effects of absorption due to competing interaction channels in the initial and final states are included. 1 A comparison of isobar and anti-isobar production in pp and pn collisions provides a further test of this model in that it includes the added absorptive effects of the annihilation channels in the pn reaction. For, while the absorption reduces cross sections of both pp and pn reactions leading to quasi-two-body final states, the model predicts a stronger absorption of low partial waves for the pn than for the pp interactions; in consequence, anti-isobar production shows a more collimated forward differential cross section and an additional reduction of total cross section over that for isobar production. Since the isospins of the two reactions reported here differ only in the sign of the third component, the two channels can be compared directly.In this paper we present an analysis of 1302 events of the type pp->pw + n and 944 events of the type pn^-^p^pip),where (p) represents the spectator proton of the deuteron. An account of the pp reaction at 2.8 GeV/c has been published 2 ; the data are presented here in a form suitable for comparison with the predictions of the absorptive one-pion-exchange model. The pn sample was obtained from approximately 15 000 three-and four-prong events observed in the deuteriumfilled 20-in. bubble chamber exposed to 2.8-GeV/c antiprotons at the Brookhaven alternating gradient synchrotron. We shall discuss only those events with at [Phys. Rev. 139, B428 (1965)] in which experimental results on several different quasi-two-body reactions are compared with the predictions of an absorptive single-particle-exchange model. 2 W. J. Fickinger, E. Pickup, D. K. Robinson, and E, O. Salant, Phys. Rev. 125, 2082 (1962). 162 least one proton of momentum less than 200 MeV/c, a range in which the impulse approximation appears valid by comparison of the proton momentum distribution with that predicted by the Hulthen wave function. 3 For the purpose of analysis the proton with lower momentum was chosen as the "spectator." Total cross sections have been computed using all events. In Figs. 1 (a) and 1 (b) are sho...
reactor that could produce more plutonium than it consumed (dubbed a "breeder reactor") was first raised during World War II by scientists in the U.S. atomic bomb program. They were concerned that uranium 235, the rare chainreacting isotope that fuels today's nuclear reactors, was insufficiently abundant on Earth to support a large-scale deployment of nuclear power. Over the next 20 years, Britain, France, Germany, India, Japan, and the Soviet Union followed the United States in establishing national plutonium breeder reactor programs. (Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands joined the French and German programs as partners.) In all of these programs, the main driver was the hope of solving the long-term energy-supply problem by deploying large numbers of nuclear power reactors. In "Fast Breeder Reactor Programs: History and Status," a new report by the International Panel on Fissile Materials, experiences with fast breeder reactors in six countries are examined. 1 These studies make clear that the assumptions driving the pursuit of breeder reactors for the past six decades have proven to be wrong. False assumptions. The rationale for pursuing breeder reactors was based on the following key assumptions (sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit): (1) Uranium is scarce, and high-grade deposits would quickly become depleted if light water nuclear reactors, which do not breed more fuel than they consume, were deployed on a large scale; (2) breeder reactors would quickly become economically competitive with light water reactors (the dominant reactor
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