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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.
Nicolas Crouzet, Paul J. Turinsky
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 123 | Number 2 | June 1996 | Pages 206-214
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE96-A24183
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In solving few-group neutron kinetic equations in multidimensions, one must select time step sizes as a function of time such that the temporal truncation error introduced by the discrete time derivative approximation is limited to ensure the desired fidelity. When using the Euler backward finite difference to approximate the first derivative of the flux—a popular approximation because it ensures numerical stability—the truncation error is know to be O(Δt2) and proportional to the second derivative. By employment of the double-time-step-size technique, modified to reduce the frequency that double-time-step-size solutions are required, an estimate of the second derivative can be obtained, leading to an efficient computational algorithm for determining the near-optimum time-step-size sequence to ensure the desired fidelity.