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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.
C. J. Mueller, J. K. Vaurio
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 69 | Number 2 | February 1979 | Pages 264-278
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE79-A20616
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper describes the basic equations and solution techniques of a collection of heat transfer and coolant voiding dynamics models that have been developed and successfully applied to simulate hypothetical accidents in liquid-metal-cooled fast breeder reactors (LMFBRs) to the point of permanent subcriticality or to the initiation of a prompt-critical excursion. These models emphasize analytic and integral solution techniques to minimize computational time and have been programmed into the SACO fast-running accident analysis computer code. The comparisons of SACO results to analogous SAS3D results used to qualify these models are illustrated and discussed. The fast-running nature of these models makes them an ideal sensitivity analysis tool for use in probabilistic evaluations of LMFBR accidents. Their use in this application is illustrated.