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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.
Edgar Kiefhaber
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 111 | Number 2 | June 1992 | Pages 197-204
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE92-A23933
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For high-accuracy criticality calculations, one should take into account the difference in the energy distributions between prompt and delayed fission neutrons. In steady-state reactor calculations, it is usually assumed that delayed and prompt neutrons are emitted with the same energy distribution. This approximation may lead to systematic deviations in keffof between −0.2 and +0.05%. While for typical cores of liquid-metal-cooled fast reactors and corresponding critical assemblies the effect is usually fairly small, it may become more important for low-enriched k∞ experiments and for highly enriched, high-leakage cores. For group cross-section adjustment procedures usually covering a wide range of critical assemblies with fairly different nuclear characteristics, a proper treatment of the energy distributions of delayed neutrons could be particularly important for excluding systematic differences as far as possible.