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Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
Weston M. Stacey, Jr.
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 29 | Number 2 | August 1967 | Pages 254-263
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE67-A18535
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Analytical expressions for the spatially independent spectrum and importance (adjoint) function in fast-reactor assemblies have been developed. These expressions were obtained by solving the neutron balance equation, and the equation adjoint thereto, by the method of successive approximation. Solutions obtained in this manner suggest an interpretation of the collision density in terms of the probability that a fission neutron suffers a given sequence of scattering collisions, summed over all such sequences. Similarly, the importance function is interpreted in terms of the fission-neutron production probability following a given sequence of scattering collisions, summed over all such sequences. The analytical expressions are readily evaluated using either differential or group-averaged cross-section values. Integral properties of highly enriched and dilute fast-reactor assemblies were evaluated and compared with experiment; the agreement was comparable with that obtained with multigroup calculations normally employed to evaluate such assemblies.