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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.
R. C. Erdmann, H. Lurie
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 28 | Number 2 | May 1967 | Pages 198-202
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE67-A17469
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Using an exact transport solution, numerical calculations of interface flux and current are made for a plane burst of neutrons introduced at the boundary separating two semi-infinite media. Asymptotic flux expressions for large time at the interface are also presented, and these have the exponential dependence given by diffusion theory. Following the neutron burst, the interface current is found to change directions once, at most. The magnitude of the interface current is shown to depend initially on the difference in scattering cross sections of the half-spaces and asymptotically on the difference in absorption cross sections. In the special case of identical half-spaces, diffusion theory yields a more accurate representation of the flux than does P1 theory, although for long times both approximate solutions rapidly approach the exact result.