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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.
John J. Ullo
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 92 | Number 2 | February 1986 | Pages 228-239
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE86-A18170
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A review is made of multidimensional radiation transport techniques that are being used to model nuclear oil well logging measurements. Both Monte Carlo and deterministic methods are employed for this work, and it is found that the realism that can be incorporated into these models has led to greater understanding of all kinds of logging measurements. As a result, models are now used as part of the new logging tool design process in much the same way that they are used to support nuclear reactor and shielding designs. Despite the success so far, there is still room to improve both Monte Carlo and especially deterministic methods for logging applications. Monte Carlo codes, impressive as they are, are still expensive computations for many logging problems. Although improvements in basic Monte Carlo can still be made, it seems that the next significant improvement in the efficiency of Monte Carlo will come from computer architecture in the form of multiprocessor machines. On the other hand, the principal limitation of deterministic calculations centers mainly on the lack of accurate, practical, three-dimensional transport capabilities. With this in mind, some recent work to extend a nodal, discrete ordinates method to three dimensions for logging applications is reviewed.