The teratogenicity of californium-252 (Cf-252) irradiation which generates approximately 70% 2.3 MeV fast neutron and 30% gamma rays was evaluated. A single whole body exposure of Cf-252 at various doses was given to pregnant rats on day 8 or 9 of pregnancy, followed by microscopic autopsy of the fetuses at the terminal stage of pregnancy to search for external and internal malformations. For c...

Abstract Due to their rarity and radioactive nature, comparatively little is known about the actinides, particularly those with atomic numbers higher than that of plutonium, compounds. In this work, we describe how transmission electron microscopy can provide comprehensive, safe, cost-effective characterization using only single nanogram amounts highly-radioactive, solid Chlorides rare elements...

There is a growing interest in the use of neutrons for national security. The majority of work on security focuses on the use of either sealed tube DT fusors or fission sources, e.g. Cf-252. Fusion reactions enable the energy of the neutron beam to be chosen to suit the application, rather than the application being chosen based on the available neutron beam energy. In this paper we discuss sim...

Sir: Plasma desorption (PD), such as that induced by the 100-MeV fission products of z5zCf, is a particularly promising ionization method for large molecules (1-5), yielding molecular inn species even from trypsin, molecular weight 23463. Further, with trypsin using nitrocellulose as the substrate, (M + 3H)3+ is the most abundant molecular ion species and (M + 6H)fi+ is measurable ( 4 ) , which...

The CARIBU (the CAlifornium Rare Ion Breeder Upgrade) project at ATLAS is based on the creation of beams of neutron-rich nuclei produced as fission fragments from the 3% fission branch that occurs naturally in the decay of Cf-252. These fission fragments are thermalized in ultrapure helium gas and turned into a charged beam for use by the ATLAS accelerator or ‘stopped’ beam experiments. This re...