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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.
J. R. L. de Ladonchamps, L. M. Grossman
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 12 | Number 2 | February 1962 | Pages 238-242
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE62-A26063
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The space energy distribution of neutrons diffusing in a source-free, nonabsorbing medium possessing a temperature gradient is obtained by solving the appropriate Boltzmann equation to a second order approximation using the expansion technique of Chapman and Enskog. The medium is assumed to possess a locally Maxwellian energy distribution and the neutron scattering is taken to be isotropic in the laboratory system of coordinates. It is found that the neutron current is increased in the direction of a negative temperature gradient and the “thermal diffusion” transport coefficient is evaluated as a function of the mass of the moderator nuclei. For the case of infinite mass nuclei, the results correspond to the kinetic theory model of a Knudsen gas in a binary Lorentzian gas mixture. An analysis of the results is carried out in the framework of the thermodynamic theory of coupled irreversible processes.