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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.
Ely M. Gelbard, Albert G. Gu
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 117 | Number 1 | May 1994 | Pages 1-9
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE94-A13564
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The derivation of the standard expression for the Monte Carlo eigenvalue bias is reviewed. It is noted that the bias is due to the repeated normalization of the fission source by the eigenvalue. This normalization can be partially or completely eliminated, but when this is done, the variance in the eigenvalue may increase unacceptably. Thus, it seems impractical, in general, to eliminate the bias in this way. Next, the Brissenden-Garlick relation between eigenvalue bias and variance is rederived for nonanalog tracking and estimation. From this relation, it is shown that the eigenvalue bias under “normal conditions is smaller than the eigenvalue’s standard deviation. In this sense, the bias is not significant, so that it is not crucially important to eliminate or to estimate it.