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Diversification and the common ground
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
Who would have thought, just a few years ago, that we would see so many long-standing barriers to new nuclear development falling like dominoes? Public opinion, policy, regulatory reform, finance and investment, design maturity, nuclear fuel enrichment, and fuel fabrication capacity have all advanced with remarkable speed in the United States.
Conventional wisdom holds that the most effective way to scale up the nuclear supply chain is to do so strategically, matching investments to the needs of reactor developers.
Patrick F. O’Rourke, Anil K. Prinja
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 3 | March 2023 | Pages 463-471
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2106728
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We explore two methods for determining the probability that a neutron, upon leaking, will transfer from one spherical assembly to another, namely, the view factor method (VFM) and the sphere point picking method (SPPM). The VFM is an approximate analytical method that assumes the neutron is leaking from a point source, and therefore, has applicability limitations. The SPPM is a purely Monte Carlo method that samples a location on the surface of a sphere as well as a trajectory leading away from said system to then determine if the neutron streams into another assembly. Numerical results from the two methods are contrasted, and the relative merits of each method discussed.