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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.
B. M. Rothleder
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 100 | Number 4 | December 1988 | Pages 479-489
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE88-A23581
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Measurements made during cycle 1 operation of Commonwealth Edison Company’s Zion Unit 2 pressurized water reactor core were used to validate the Electric Power Research Institute Advanced Recycle Methodology Program. In addition to the usual reaction rate and axial trace measurements for determining power distributions, gamma scan measurements were available to provide additional data to validate the calculated power shapes. The parallel occurrence of gamma scan measurements and standard nuclear instrumentation measurements provided a unique opportunity to intercompare the results of these measurement methods. The calculated X-Y gamma scan behavior supported the behavior of the calculated X-Y reaction rates. The measured X-Y gamma scans were found to be more accurate than the measured X- Y reaction rates, with the latter showing significant differences among some symmetrically located assemblies. For both types of measurement, however, the modeling of the asymmetrically loaded assembly located furthest in the core periphery produced the poorest results. The axial gamma scan calculation proved very accurate except at the inlet and outlet regions.