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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.
V. G. Molinari, L. Pollachini
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 91 | Number 4 | December 1985 | Pages 458-469
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE85-A18362
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A set of equations that describes the diffusion of thermal neutrons is obtained from the energy-dependent Boltzmann equation. These equations are analogous to the phenomenological laws of the thermodynamic theory of irreversible processes and show, for instance, that as a temperature gradient produces a neutron current (Soret effect), a density gradient yields an energy flow (Dufour effect). The method is applied to the “two-temperature problem” in order to gain better insight into the thermal diffusion phenomenon. The thermal diffusion of neutrons is shown to strongly depend on the scattering law of the two media where neutrons diffuse, and it is determined that some of the conclusions previously obtained are valid only for the case of a heavy gas moderator with the scattering cross section independent of the energy.