Russia and the US in the Cold War arms race
DOI: 10.1063/PT.3.2328
The perspectives Frank von Hippel gives on the end of the Cold War are illuminating, but I was surprised to learn (page 45) of an experiment conducted to detect “gamma rays from a warhead by means of a liquid-nitrogen-cooled high-purity germanium scintillation counter.” As is common knowledge in radiation detection and nuclear physics, high-purity germanium (HPGe) detectors are not scintillators, they are semiconductors. If one examines von Hippel’s reference 10, it’s clear the confusion may have arisen because, in addition to the use of both HPGe and lithium-drifted Ge, thallium-doped sodium iodide scintillators were also employed for gamma-ray detection. However, the principal analyses were based on measurements made with the Ge semiconductor detectors.
More about the Authors
James Carroll. (james.j.carroll99.civ@mail.mil) Army Research Laboratory, Adelphi, Maryland.
