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Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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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.
Robert E. Miles
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 79 | Number 2 | October 1981 | Pages 239-245
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE81-A27414
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new approach is presented for handling problems involving radioactive decay, buildup, and mass transfer. This method uses recursion relations for computing the exponential terms that makes the computation fast and efficient. The concepts of a path specific probability function and a cumulative transfer probability function are introduced and used in developing a general equation. This general equation permits branching from a parent to any daughter nuclide further down the decay chain and also mass transfer to other compartments linked by first-order transfer rate constants. Backward branching or feedback mechanisms, however, are not permitted. Treatment for problems involving singularities is also presented. The method has been found to be useful for many practical applications such as fission product buildup in nuclear reactor cores and releases from reactor plants.