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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.
M. H. Kalos
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 16 | Number 1 | May 1963 | Pages 111-117
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE63-A26481
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In estimating flux at a point in a Monte Carlo calculation one estimator uses the uncollided flux at a detector from each sampled collision point. This method is shown to have infinite variance. The average value converges to the expected value but the error decreases asymptotically as the inverse cube root of the number of histories. By using the once collided flux and by proper choice of the intermediate collision point the variance may be made finite. Results of numerical experiments show the finite variance methods to be preferable.