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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.
Sevim Tan
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 30 | Number 3 | December 1967 | Pages 436-447
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE67-A18403
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A solution of the zero-power kinetic equations for sinusoidal excess reactivity insertions, previously obtained by the author by Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin approach (WKB), is further discussed. Explicit equations for the reactor period, reactivity bias, and stabilized reactor response, within the range of applicability of the method, are derived. Harmonic contents of the logarithm of flux for both pure and properly biased sinusoidal reactivity variations are analyzed. Fourier components of flux yielding the new steady-state mean power, the fundamental and the second harmonic are given. Results of the treatment are extended to the describing function of a low-power nuclear reactor and the major error involved in the earlier literature is indicated. The procedure, although developed under the assumption of one average group of delayed neutrons, is expected to yield very satisfactory results even if generalized to multigroup treatment.