Crossing boundaries

Publisher PD

Driving the Bow

Publisher PD

Connecting Cultures

Publisher PD

A high efficiency, low background detector for measuring pair-decay branches in nuclear decay

We describe a high efficiency detector for measuring electron-positron pair transitions in nuclei. The device was built to be insensitive to gamma rays and to accommodate high overall event rates. The design was optimized for total pair kinetic energies up to about 7 MeV.Comment: Accepted for publication by Nucl. Inst. & Meth. in Phys. Res. A (NIM A

Digital Computer Analysis of the Kinetic Response of a Thermal Pressurized Water Reactor Power Plant

A digital computer model has been developed to simulate the kinetic response of a thermal pressurized water reactor power plant. The program is capable of predicting core power and plant temperature variations which result from disturbances due to routine demand changes, control rod movement, and fission product poison transients as well as from transients during plausible accident situations. The development of the differential equations describing the influence of various primary plant components on the dynamics of the reactor have been heretofore documented in the literature. Finite difference equations facilitating the employment of a digital computer solution are fully derived. Confidence in program validity is supported by the simulation of previously studied accidents and comparison with the safety analyses of a licensed nuclear power generating plant. A source listing of the computer program is provided in the Appendix

Analysis of Gamma Radiation from a Radon Source: Indications of a Solar Influence

This article presents an analysis of about 29,000 measurements of gamma radiation associated with the decay of radon in a sealed container at the Geological Survey of Israel (GSI) Laboratory in Jerusalem between 28 January 2007 and 10 May 2010. These measurements exhibit strong variations in time of year and time of day, which may be due in part to environmental influences. However, time-series analysis reveals a number of periodicities, including two at approximately 11.2 year$^{-1}$ and 12.5 year$^{-1}$. We have previously found these oscillations in nuclear-decay data acquired at the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), and we have suggested that these oscillations are attributable to some form of solar radiation that has its origin in the deep solar interior. A curious property of the GSI data is that the annual oscillation is much stronger in daytime data than in nighttime data, but the opposite is true for all other oscillations. This may be a systematic effect but, if it is not, this property should help narrow the theoretical options for the mechanism responsible for decay-rate variability.Comment: 9 pages, 21 figure

Power Spectrum Analysis of LMSU (Lomonosov Moscow State University) Nuclear Decay-Rate Data: Further Indication of r-Mode Oscillations in an Inner Solar Tachocline

This article presents a power-spectrum analysis of 2,350 measurements of the $^{90}$Sr/$^{90}$Y decay process acquired over the interval 4 August 2002 to 6 February 2009 at the Lomonosov Moscow State University (LMSU). As we have found for other long sequences of decay measurements, the power spectrum is dominated by a very strong annual oscillation. However, we also find a set of low-frequency peaks, ranging from 0.26 year$^{-1}$ to 3.98 year$^{-1}$, which are very similar to an array of peaks in a power spectrum formed from Mt Wilson solar diameter measurements. The Mt Wilson measurements have been interpreted in terms of r-mode oscillations in a region where the sidereal rotation frequency is 12.08 year$^{-1}$. We find that the LMSU measurements may also be attributed to the same type of r-mode oscillations in a solar region with the same sidereal rotation frequency. We propose that these oscillations occur in an inner tachocline that separates the radiative zone from a more slowly rotating solar core.Comment: 5 pages, 8 figures. v2 corrects three typographical errors on page 3, including the missing list of r-modes in sec. 3, para

Study of the dependence of 198Au half-life on source geometry

We report the results of an experiment to determine whether the half-life of \Au{198} depends on the shape of the source. This study was motivated by recent suggestions that nuclear decay rates may be affected by solar activity, perhaps arising from solar neutrinos. If this were the case then the $\beta$-decay rates, or half-lives, of a thin foil sample and a spherical sample of gold of the same mass and activity could be different. We find for \Au{198}, $(T_{1/2})_{\rm foil}/(T_{1/2})_{\rm sphere} = 0.999 \pm 0.002$, where $T_{1/2}$ is the mean half-life. The maximum neutrino flux at the sample in our experiments was several times greater than the flux of solar neutrinos at the surface of the Earth. We show that this increase in flux leads to a significant improvement in the limits that can be inferred on a possible solar contribution to nuclear decays.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur

Analysis of environmental influences in nuclear half-life measurements exhibiting time-dependent decay rates

In a recent series of papers evidence has been presented for correlations between solar activity and nuclear decay rates. This includes an apparent correlation between Earth-Sun distance and data taken at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), and at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB). Although these correlations could arise from a direct interaction between the decaying nuclei and some particles or fields emanating from the Sun, they could also represent an "environmental" effect arising from a seasonal variation of the sensitivities of the BNL and PTB detectors due to changes in temperature, relative humidity, background radiation, etc. In this paper, we present a detailed analysis of the responses of the detectors actually used in the BNL and PTB experiments, and show that sensitivities to seasonal variations in the respective detectors are likely too small to produce the observed fluctuations