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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.
Mary E. Ward, John C. Lee
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 95 | Number 1 | January 1987 | Pages 47-59
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE87-A20431
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A singular perturbation method for the analysis of large power oscillations in nuclear reactors is applied to obtain phase-plane solutions of the Ergen- Weinberg model. The system equations, recast in an appropriate form, directly give a first approximation to the closed trajectory in which the system behavior is idealized as relaxation oscillations. Further approximations in the phase plane are determined using separate perturbation series on individual parts of the oscillation, with variations in the assignment of dependent and independent variables to consistently obtain convergent series. The accuracy of each order of the phase-plane solution increases with the magnitude of the power pulse in the actual physical situation. For realistic reactor conditions, both the trajectory and period of oscillation are well predicted using the first two terms of each perturbation series.