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Breaking ground on a new approach to construction
The drive to Kairos Power’s reactor demonstration site in Oak Ridge, Tenn., is not only scenic—it’s historic. Nearly 85 years ago, roughly 30,000 construction workers transformed orchards and farmland into a key Manhattan Project site. Depending on your route, you may pass by one of the three gatehouses that were once military checkpoints controlling access to Atomic Energy Commission production facilities.
R. N. Hwang
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 56 | Number 2 | February 1975 | Pages 119-130
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE75-A26651
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper describes some general characteristics of the uncertainties in various fast-reactor parameters as a function of the corresponding uncertainties in nuclear data on the basis of statistical theory. By using the variational formalism, it is possible to relate the mean-square deviation of any reactivity coefficient (or reaction-rate ratio) to the covariance matrix of cross sections. The qualitative behavior of the uncertainties in fast-reactor parameters can be best illustrated geometrically in terms of the region of tolerance. The latter is the volume bound by a “hyper-ellipsoid” surface specified by the designer’s tolerance limit, the coefficients characteristic of the type of parameter in the system under consideration, and the correlation matrix. Exploratory studies and graphical illustrations are given for some cases of practical interest.