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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.
Richard A. Hendrickson, Glenn Murphy
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 31 | Number 2 | February 1968 | Pages 215-221
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE68-A18233
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A method is developed to determine the ratio of the reactivity coupling coefficient to the mean generation time in a two-slab reactor based on experimental measurements of the inherent reactor-noise spectrum. A matrix formulation of the cross-spectral density function of the fluctuating neutron density at two experimental access locations adjacent to the cores is used in conjunction with a two-point reactor model to show that the real part of the cross-spectral density vanishes at a particular frequency, termed the sink frequency. The sink frequency is a function of the ratio of the reactivity coupling coefficient to generation time in the cores and the times required for neutron disturbances to travel between the cores and the detector locations. Experimental results from the UTR-10 reactor verify the predicted behavior of the cross-spectral density function in the neighborhood of the sink frequency and provide an at-critical measurement of the reactivity coupling coefficient.