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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.
A. Dubi, Y. S. Horowitz, H. Rief
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 71 | Number 1 | July 1979 | Pages 29-45
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE79-A20327
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The mathematical validity of the track rotation estimator (TRE) as an unbiased point flux estimator is presented in detail. The mathematical formulation of the TRE is developed for the cases of spherical symmetry, spherically symmetrical media with nonisotropic source, and nonsymmetrical media. Various methods for biasing the angular distribution to obtain a bounded variance are developed. The results of calculations in which the TRE is applied to test problems—infinite media, sphere, and sphere with nonisotropic source—as well as a three-dimensional finite slab with point source are presented and compared with the uncollided flux (UCF) and the once-collided flux (OCF) estimators. The results indicate substantially superior quality factors for the TRE over the UCF and the OCF estimators, especially when the absorption cross section is small.