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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.
João Moreira, John C. Lee
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 98 | Number 3 | March 1988 | Pages 244-254
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE88-A22325
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Control rod worth measurements through the inverse kinetics equation depend on accurate determination of the amplitude function from detector signals. The modal-local method introduced in a previous study estimates space-time changes in the flux or shape function so that the amplitude function can be determined accurately and efficiently. A simple thermal-hydraulic feedback model is included in the modal-local method for at-power reactivity analysis. The method is tested with two simulated rod worth measurements: a zero-power rod drop experiment and a differential rod worth measurement in a power reactor. The modal-local method reproduces the reactivity obtained with the FX2-TH time-dependent diffusion theory code with an overall accuracy of 1 to 2%, except for simulated detectors located in the immediate vicinity of the rod motion.