ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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.D. Ganapol, G. C. Pomraning
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 123 | Number 1 | May 1996 | Pages 110-120
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE96-A24216
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We consider the two-region Milne problem, defined as the steady-state monoenergetic linear transport problem for two adjoining homogeneous source-free half-spaces, with a particle source coming from infinity in one of the half-spaces. We demonstrate that the asymptotic (Case discrete mode) component of the solution for the scalar flux is easily and explicitly written in terms of Chandrasekhar’s H-function for each medium. This asymptotic solution is shown to exhibit a discontinuity in both the scalar flux and current at the interface between the two half-spaces. Numerical benchmark results for the linear extrapolation distance and the discontinuities are given for various combinations of the mean number of secondaries (c) characterizing the two media. Contact is also made with a variational treatment. In particular, the variational formalism is shown to predict the linear extrapolation distance and these asymptotic discontinuities correct to first order in the difference between the values of c characterizing the two half-spaces.