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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.
K. N. Schwinkendorf
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 121 | Number 1 | September 1995 | Pages 136-141
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE95-A24135
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Large computer codes have been created in the past to predict the energy release in hypothetical core disruptive accidents (CDA) postulated to occur in liquid-metal reactors (LMRs). These codes, such as SIMMER, are highly specific to LMR designs. More recent attention has focused on thermal-spectrum criticality accidents such as for fuel storage basins and waste tanks containing fissile material. This paper presents results from recent one-dimensional kinetics simulations, performed for a recriticality accident in a thermal spectrum. Reactivity insertion rates generally are smaller than in LMR CDAs, and the energetics generally are more benign. Parametric variation of input was performed, including reactivity insertion and initial temperature.