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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.
P. Wälti
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 36 | Number 2 | May 1969 | Pages 133-142
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE69-A19713
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The mathematical model of age-dependent branching processes is used to describe neutron slowing down and multiplication in an infinite medium. To construct the probability measure of the neutron branching process, it is necessary to determine the probability density for a neutron of age θ(=time elapsed since birth of the fission neutron) to have energy E. This problem, which is equivalent to the time-dependent slowing down problem, is solved for a scattering law of the form v(E)Σs(E → E′)dE′ = aEµh(E′/E) (dE′/E) and an absorption cross section satisfying the relation v(E) Σa(E) = bEµ + c. In this case, it is proved that there always exist particular “invariant” probability densities suffering only contraction during ageing, i.e., having the form . For the time-dependent slowing down problem with a Greuling-Goertzel kernel, the results are compared with those of Koppel. Particular attention is paid to stationary energy spectra.