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Xcel Energy reports on tritium levels in well near Mississippi River
Recent testing of a monitoring well in Minnesota near the Mississippi River detected tritium levels just below the safety standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency, Xcel Energy reported this week.
J. A. Grzesik
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 6 | June 2023 | Pages 1255-1263
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2138064
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We undertake to derive herein the Wigner-Wilkins (W-W) neutron/nucleus scattering kernel, a foundation stone in neutron thermalization theory, on the basis of a self-contained calculation in quantum mechanics. Indeed, a quantum-mechanical derivation of the W-W kernel is available in the literature, but it is, in our opinion, robbed of conviction by being couched in terms of an excessive generality. Here, by contrast, we proceed along a self-contained route relying on the Fermi pseudopotential and a first-order term in a time-dependent Born approximation series. Our calculations are fully explicit at every step, and, in particular, we tackle in its every detail a final integration whose result is merely stated in the available literature. Furthermore, and perhaps the most important point of all, we demonstrate that the quantum-mechanical W-W kernel outcome is identical down to the last iota with its classical antecedent, classical not only by virtue of historical precedence but also by being based on classical Newtonian mechanics.