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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. Langenbuch, W. Maurer, W. Werner
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 63 | Number 4 | August 1977 | Pages 437-456
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE77-A27061
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A coarse-mesh method for the solution of multidimensional neutron kinetics problems is presented that is based on the approximation of the desired solution by basis functions with local nonoverlapping supports corresponding to the volume elements of the spatial mesh. Integration of the approximating functions over their supports, and exploitation of continuity conditions for neutron flux and current, yields local seven-point difference operators with solution-dependent coupling coefficients. Due to the finite-difference (FD) structure of the resulting matrix equation, any technique developed for FD methods can be used for its solution. However, a novel (“almost implicit”) alternating direction explicit-implicit technique has been developed that is especially suited for coarse-mesh applications. Numerical examples that demonstrate the high efficiency of the method are presented. By using a spatial grid corresponding to the fuel element structure, it is possible to compute power distribution and its time history very accurately (at most, with a several percent error) at an economically tolerable expense.