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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.
Bo Eriksson, Claes Johansson, Martin Leimdorfer, M. H. Kalos
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 37 | Number 3 | September 1969 | Pages 410-422
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE69-A19116
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The integral equation adjoint to the linear transport equation for neutrons is formulated and prescriptions given for its solution by Monte Carlo methods. The process of tracking is the same as for the usual (i.e., forward) Monte Carlo and may be applied to complex geometry. On the other hand, the scattering process is determined by a kernel which is the transpose of the one used in the forward equation. With the help of suitably defined “adjoint cross sections” this transposed kernel may be written as a superposition of density functions for different reaction types in different nuclides. It is then possible to sample nuclide and reaction sequentially as in the familiar Monte Carlo for the forward process. Most emphasis is put upon the solution of the analytical and numerical problems which arise in calculating and sampling the probability distributions which determine these scattering processes. Detailed treatment is given for generating and using the requisite data for elastic scattering, for discrete level and continuum inelastic neutron scattering: and for (n, 2n) reactions.