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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.
D. R. Simpson, M. M. R. Williams, S. Simons
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 101 | Number 3 | March 1989 | Pages 259-268
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE89-A23613
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A theoretical treatment is developed for the deposition and transport of an aerosol in a multicompartment system in which there exists a pressure-induced gas flow. Based on a solution of the relevant gas equations, the aerosol equation is first formulated and then solved numerically by both discretization and moments techniques. The former method is more accurate, but the complex nature of the problem means that the computing time required can be prohibitive, especially when the number of compartments is large. The moments technique, based on a gamma or lognormal distribution, requires substantially less computing time, and to estimate its accuracy, a validation comparison has been made with the discretization method. The technique was then applied to two multicompartment accident situations. Results show that the moments method based on the gamma distribution is significantly more accurate than the lognormal-based one and is also in close agreement with the results from the AEROSIM code.