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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.
William Bennett, Ryan G. McClarren, Jim Ferguson
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 200 | Number 4 | April 2026 | Pages 781-799
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2025.2584756
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Verification solutions for the radiographic imaging of blast waves are produced under certain assumptions. These are the spatial independence of the hydrodynamics and radiation in the y- and z-directions, monoenergetic radiation, nonrelativistic fluid kinetics, no significant heat transfer from incident X-rays, and negligible radiation energy compared to the internal energy of the fluid. The last two assumptions uncouple the hydrodynamics equations from the radiation transport equation. Radiograph solutions are given in general for a purely absorbing medium with cross sections that are a function of the traveling shock. Specific solutions are constructed for a square density wave and for the Taylor-Sedov–von Neumann self-similar blast wave. The influence of relativistic effects in the radiation equations due to high blast velocities is examined. In addition to the analytic pure absorber results, a transport benchmark solver is applied to the problem to produce radiation results to simulate Thomson scattering in the shocked fluid.