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Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2025)
February 3–6, 2025
Amelia Island, FL|Omni Amelia Island Resort
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How to talk about nuclear
In your career as a professional in the nuclear community, chances are you will, at some point, be asked (or volunteer) to talk to at least one layperson about the technology you know and love. You might even be asked to present to a whole group of nonnuclear folks, perhaps as a pitch to some company tangential to your company’s business. So, without further ado, let me give you some pointers on the best way to approach this important and surprisingly complicated task.
M. E. Congdon, R. W. Albrecht
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 39 | Number 2 | February 1970 | Pages 207-214
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE70-A21200
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A set of fundamental equations for fluctuations about the mean neutron density is studied for a reactor-detector system in which the detector is treated as an integral part of the system. The reactor-detector system is described, mathematically, as a general Markov process, and expressions for various descriptive parameters are derived in a consistent manner within the context of the basic equations. The role of the general adjoint neutron density is discussed with special emphasis on the mean and second-moment functions, and a relationship between the second-moment equations similar to the relationship between first-moments (mean and its adjoint) is observed. The extension to higher moments is also noted. A reduction of the second-moment equations is carried out, without approximation, using a variational principle. This consistent reduction allows a definition of the parameters involved, especially a definition of the detector efficiency, through a comparison of this reduced form with the usual point-reactor equations. The parameters defined contain weighting functions dependent upon the number of detectors used in the experiment.
