Phil in SF quoted A City On Mars by Kelly Weinersmith
Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away—no climate …
These are not cheap to make, but they're especially good at neutron absorption and absorbing the cascades of spallation that can be generated when particles strike other types of shielding.
— A City On Mars by Kelly Weinersmith, Zach Weinersmith (Page 439 - 440)
new vocabulary: spallation
(physics) The breakup of a bombarded nucleus into several parts