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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. K. Vaurio, C. Mueller
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 65 | Number 2 | February 1978 | Pages 401-413
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE78-A27167
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Response surface techniques are presented for obtaining the probability distributions of selected consequences of a liquid-metal fast breeder reactor hypothetical core disruptive accident. The uncertainties of the consequences are considered as a variability of the system and model input parameters used in the accident analysis. Probability distributions are assigned to the input parameters, and parameter values are systematically chosen from these distributions. These input parameters are then used in deterministic consequence analyses that are performed by fast-running analogs of the comprehensive mechanistic accident analysis codes. The results of these deterministic consequence analyses are used to generate the coefficients for response surface functions that approximate the consequences in terms of the selected input parameters. These approximating functions are then used to generate the probability distributions of the consequences with random sampling being used to obtain values for the accident parameters from their distributions. Two different schemes are presented for selecting the knot-point values of the input parameters. The first generates a single second-order polynomial for the entire parameter space; the second generates separate polynomials for specified regions of the parameter space. A technique to handle nonindependent or correlated input parameters is presented. Finally, the calculation of conditional distributions of the consequences and the use of these distributions to define importance distributions of the input parameters are presented. The use of these procedures is illustrated by applications to a postulated loss-of-flow transient with failure to scram in a Clinch River Breeder-type reactor.