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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.
Song Hyun Kim, Do Hyun Kim, Jong Kyung Kim, Jea Man Noh
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 178 | Number 1 | September 2014 | Pages 29-41
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE13-38
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In order to avoid calculation bias and increase calculation efficiency, convergence of the fission source distribution (FSD) in Monte Carlo simulations is important. Numerous analysis methods have been developed and used for checking the fission source convergence. However, such schemes have low applicability to Monte Carlo codes or give low diagnostic accuracy. To address these limitations, a method to verify the fission source convergence using the average and standard deviation of fission source positions is proposed. To collect the fission site information, the MCNP5 code was modified, and position information was extracted. The accuracy and advantages of the proposed method were verified by solving Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/Nuclear Energy Agency benchmark problems with the modified MCNP5 code and comparing the results to those obtained with the Shannon entropy and the nine center distance sum approaches. The analysis shows that the proposed method has good applicability and exhibits high accuracy for verifying the convergence of the FSD. It is expected that the proposed scheme will be a valuable contribution to the field of the fission source convergence.