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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.
T. M. John, Om Pal Singh
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 85 | Number 4 | December 1983 | Pages 362-370
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE83-A18383
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The results of a theoretical study of noise transmission characteristics of multiplying media and neutron noise source localization in liquid-metal fast breeder reactors (LMFBRs) by using the neutron wave propagation technique is reported. The study was carried out using one-group as well as multigroup diffusion theory. Both theories show that the noise transmission characteristics are quite sensitive to the multiplication factor k of the medium. For k very close to unity, the response of the out-of-core detectors is found to be the same irrespective of the location of the neutron noise source in the multiplying medium. However, for a highly subcritical reactor, the response of the out-of-core detectors is sensitive to the location of the neutron noise source, and from the point of view of the noise transmission characteristics, the medium behaves like a nonmultiplying medium. The analytical results of one-group theory that are fully supported by the multigroup multiregion theory clearly indicate that the neutron noise signal at detector locations can be assumed to be made up of two components—the first (local) is insensitive to the multiplication factor, and the second (global) is very sensitive to the multiplication factor of the system. If the local component can be separated from the total out-of-core detector signal, then a proper calibration of the local component with respect to the various locations of neutron noise source may help in finding the location of the neutron noise source in LMFBR cores. Further, it is observed that, as in the case of nonmultiplying media, noise transmission through largely subcritical multiplying media occurs with equal attenuation for all frequencies w < (υ∑t)min, where υ is the speed of the neutrons and ∑t is the total removal cross section, and for w > (υ ∑,t)min, the attenuation increases with frequency. However, for a critical system, the global component in a multiplying medium is maximum at lower frequencies and decreases rapidly for higher frequencies, and the local component remains the same as in the case of largely subcritical systems.
