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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.
Akio Yamamoto, Tomohiro Endo, Satoshi Takeda, Hiroki Koike, Kazuya Yamaji, Koji Asano
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 198 | Number 5 | May 2024 | Pages 981-992
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2023.2230414
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A deterministic transport calculation method is proposed for the treatment of dispersed fuel particles in a fuel compact/fuel pebble of a typical high-temperature gas-cooled reactor fuel. The random distribution of fuel particles was considered using the statistical geometry (STG) method, which is widely used in the Monte Carlo method. A long-ray trace, which represents a neutron flight path, was considered, and the segment lengths and material distributions on the ray trace were randomly sampled using STG. Then a conventional transport sweep, as used in the method of characteristics, was performed along the ray trace. The proposed deterministic statistical geometry (DSTG) method can calculate the flux spatial distribution in a heterogeneous geometry containing randomly dispersed fuel particles and the surrounding graphite matrix, which is consistent with the STG in a Monte Carlo method. The validity of the DSTG method was confirmed through sensitivity calculations and comparisons with a multigroup Monte Carlo method that utilizes STG. The proposed method can be used for the homogenization of heterogeneous structures inside a fuel compact or fuel pebble as an alternative to conventional deterministic unit cell calculations that consider fuel particles and the surrounding matrix in high-temperature gas-cooled reactor fuels.