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In transition: Commercializing fusion power
Commercial fusion power is closer than ever. There are now around 30 U.S. fusion companies, several of which claim to be on track to connect to the grid as early as the 2030s.
Tokamak and laser inertial confinement approaches benefit from decades of research at facilities such as the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and ITER, with alternative concepts including stellarator, magnetic mirror, and Z-pinch confinement also making notable progress as private and government funding for fusion increases.
R. L. French, L. G. Mooney
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 47 | Number 3 | March 1972 | Pages 375-380
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE72-A22425
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The “last-collision” method for computing the air-ground interface effect on scattered neutron intensity is extended to give the effect on the intensity within individual polar angle groups at a detector near the ground. The method yields angle-dependent perturbation factors which can be used to adjust infinite-air angle distributions to account for the presence of an air-ground interface, or to adjust angle distributions from one detector height to another. To determine the factors, a uniform scattering distribution in the air about the detector is assumed, and the fractional contribution from each last-collision center in the air is calculated. In addition, the fraction scattered directly to the detector from the ground surface is calculated using a simplified albedo model. An evaluation of the angle-dependent last-collision model indicated that the results of discrete ordinate calculations for infinite air could be modified to give relative polar angle distributions of the scattered neutron dose near the air-ground interface within 10 to 20% of those calculated directly for the air-over-ground case by the discrete ordinate method.