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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.
Iván Lux
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 73 | Number 1 | January 1980 | Pages 66-75
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE80-A18709
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Sufficient conditions are provided in terms of transition kernels under which one game results in a lower variance than another game when both estimate the same quantity. By defining the efficiency of a Monte Carlo game by the inverse of the product of the variance and the number of collisions per history and the computing time per collision, and by using a special approximation, called the separation assumption, for the evaluation of integrals occurring in the analysis, it is shown in a simplified situation that the expected leakage probability method in reaction rate and leakage estimations, although reducing the variance, is less efficient than the analog game with an expectation estimator. The efficiency of a game with survival biasing and Russian roulette is examined, and a simple method is presented for the determination of a quasi-optimum value of the Russian roulette parameter.