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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.
G. C. Pomraning, C. A. Stevens
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 55 | Number 4 | December 1974 | Pages 359-367
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE74-A23469
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The transport and diffusion equations appropriate for performing neutronic and photonic calculations in toroidal geometry are derived. This geometry is an important one in current conceptual designs of controlled thermonuclear reactors. It is shown that for an azimuthally independent problem, the toroidal diffusion equation can be cast into the standard r-θ cylindrical equation by appropriately redefining the diffusion coefficient, absorption cross section, and external source. A Fourier expansion of the diffusion equation to obtain the theta dependence of the flux is shown to have the same truncation properties as those associated with the spherical harmonics method. A more useful expansion is one in inverse powers of the aspect ratio of the toroidal system. An idealized problem is solved analytically to obtain the first-order correction term arising from the overall curvature of the toroidal system. For an aspect ratio of three, typical of Tokamak fusion reactors now under consideration, this result indicates that local errors in the flux in excess of 15% can arise if the toroidal character of the geometry is neglected.