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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.
S. Zlering, D. Schiff
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 3 | Number 6 | June 1958 | Pages 635-647
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE58-A25501
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The method of half-range polynomials is applied to neutron transport theory. The specific applicability of this method to problems having discontinuities in the nuclear parameters at the boundaries or interfaces is discussed. Half-range polynomial expansions are used to obtain solutions for both finite and semi-infinite slabs, which consist of isotropically scattering media. The results indicate that the half-range approximations compare favorably with higher approximations obtained from the full-range spherical harmonic or several discrete ordinate methods. In particular, the poor convergence, found in the full-range methods in regions close to the discontinuity, is not present in the half-range method. The latter method is used to obtain a pair of second-order coupled differential equations, as in diffusion theory.