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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.
Leib Finkelstein
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 32 | Number 2 | May 1968 | Pages 241-248
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE68-A19736
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A complete inverse mass expansion is derived for the difference-differential equation describing neutron moderation in infinite homogeneous media, far energetically from the sources. We consider slowing down equations with different values of the nucleus-to-neutron mass ratio, and a common value of the capture-to-scattering cross-section ratio. The latter is assumed to be an analytic function of lethargy. A preliminary analysis suggests the functional form of the leading term of the expansion. Further treatment leads to a first-order, linear, inhomogeneous, ordinary differential equation satisfied by the expansion terms. Different terms of the expansion correspond to different free terms of the differential equation. Imposing a normalization condition, the solution of the differential equation is made unique, and a formal, practically effective solution to the general asymptotic moderation problem is obtained.