Randy writes:
> Yes...heard much about that as a nuclear reactor operator in the US
> Navy some years ago. We used to peer through the leaded glass when
> passing the reactor tunnel, hoping to catch a glimpse of the "Cerenkov
> glow." Never did see it, though.
You see plenty of it in the spent fuel element decay pool, it's blue-greenish in colour and pretty bright (you shouldn't dive to bathe in the glow, though). The brightest illumination is to be found in water-cooled high-flux reactors. The higher the refractive index of the braking medium, the more you should see of it. Glass and diamond are obviously best, gases are almost vacuum so you need very fast particles/lots of them.
'gene