Martin Becker – författare

Some countries have moved beyond the design and operation of nuclear electricity generating systems to confronting the issue of nuclear waste disposal, whole others are still committed to further nuclear facility construction. Volume 24 chronicles these key developments and examines nuclear reactor accidents at Chernobyl, Bhopal, and TMI. The text also analyzes current international knowledge of neutron interactions; deterministic methods based on mean values for assessing radiation distributions; practical applications of the TIBERE models to explicit computation of leakage terms in realistic reactor geometry; and a technique to deal with the issues of finance, risk assessment, and public perception.

The present review volume not only covers a wide range of topics pertinent to nuclear science and technology, but has attracted a distinguished international authorship, for which the editors are grateful. The opening review by Drs. Janet Tawn and Richard Wakeford addresses the difficult matter of questioning sci- tific hypotheses in a court of law. The United Kingdom experienced a substantial nuclear accident in the 1950s in the form of the Windscale Pile fire. This in itself had both good and bad consequences; the setting up of a licensing authority to ensure nuclear safety was one, the understandable public sentiment concerning nuclear power (despite the fire occurring in a weapons pile) the other. Windscale today is subsumed in the reprocessing plant at Sellafield operated by British Nuclear Fuels plc and it was inevitable perhaps that when an excess cluster of childhood leukaemia was observed in the nearby village of Seascale that public concern should be promoted by the media, leading to the hearing of a claim of compensation brought on behalf of two of the families of BNFLs workers who had suffered that loss. The review article demonstrates the complexity of und- standing such a claim against the statistical fluctuations inherent and shows how the courts were persuaded of the need to propose a biological mechanism if responsibility were to be held. The Company were undoubtedly relieved by the finding.

Since its initiation in 1962, this series has presented authoritative reviews of the most important developments in nuclear science and engineering, from both theoretical and applied perspectives. In addition, many original contributions are included.

Since its initiation in 1962, this series has presented authoritative reviews of the most important developments in nuclear science and engineering, from both theoretical and applied perspectives. In addition, many original contributions are included.

The editors have pleasure in presenting this volume of our review series. We have specialised in three areas: perturbation Monte Carlo, non-linear kinetics and the transfer of radioactive fluids in rocks. These contributions are linked, however, in the demands for optimising complex systems that are a feature of the scale of nuclear power production. Kuniharu Kishida’s account of Japanese thinking in the application of modern non-linear theory to reactor kinetics and control comes at a time when the community of control scholars is seeking how to apply the new ideas that have led to the prominence of chaos theory to our field. Pr- lems of maintenance in power reactors are as severe as ever and must be solved for credibility to characterise any new program. As much as 30% of unanticipated down-time, for example, is due to the failure of motor op- ated valves. We need a theory to provide for preventive maintenance. This in turn depends heavily on on-line monitoring to anticipate failure as well as expert systems to schedule preventive treatment. Noise theory with its promise of on-line interpretation of information from inchoate breakdown is the key. It is all too likely that the need to deal with major departures makes a non-linear theory of noise essential. We can be grateful that P- fessor Kishida has provided us with such a consistent account.

Some countries have moved beyond the design and operation of nuclear electricity generating systems to confronting the issue of nuclear waste disposal, whole others are still committed to further nuclear facility construction. Volume 24 chronicles these key developments and examines nuclear reactor accidents at Chernobyl, Bhopal, and TMI. The text also analyzes current international knowledge of neutron interactions; deterministic methods based on mean values for assessing radiation distributions; practical applications of the TIBERE models to explicit computation of leakage terms in realistic reactor geometry; and a technique to deal with the issues of finance, risk assessment, and public perception.

The present review volume not only covers a wide range of topics pertinent to nuclear science and technology, but has attracted a distinguished international authorship, for which the editors are grateful. The opening review by Drs. Janet Tawn and Richard Wakeford addresses the difficult matter of questioning sci- tific hypotheses in a court of law. The United Kingdom experienced a substantial nuclear accident in the 1950s in the form of the Windscale Pile fire. This in itself had both good and bad consequences; the setting up of a licensing authority to ensure nuclear safety was one, the understandable public sentiment concerning nuclear power (despite the fire occurring in a weapons pile) the other. Windscale today is subsumed in the reprocessing plant at Sellafield operated by British Nuclear Fuels plc and it was inevitable perhaps that when an excess cluster of childhood leukaemia was observed in the nearby village of Seascale that public concern should be promoted by the media, leading to the hearing of a claim of compensation brought on behalf of two of the families of BNFLs workers who had suffered that loss. The review article demonstrates the complexity of und- standing such a claim against the statistical fluctuations inherent and shows how the courts were persuaded of the need to propose a biological mechanism if responsibility were to be held. The Company were undoubtedly relieved by the finding.

This volume represents the second of our occasional departures from the format of an annual review series, being devoted to one coherent topic. We have the pleasure therefore in presenting a concerted sequence of articles on the use of Simulators for Nuclear Power. An essential attribute of a quantified engineer in any discipline is to be able to model and predict, i.e. to analyze, the behaviour of the subject under scrutiny. Simulation goes, one would argue, a step further. The engineer providing a simulator takes a broader view of the system studied and makes the analysis available to a wider audience. Hence simulation may have a part to play in design but also in operation, in accident studies and also in training. It leads to synthesis as well as analysis. There is no doubt that the massive scale and the economic investment implied in nuclear power programmes demands an increased infra-structure in licensing and training as well as in design and operation. The simulator is a cheap alter­ native - admittedly cheap only in relative terms - but also perhaps an essential method of providing realistic experience with negligible or at least small risk. Nuclear power therefore has led to a wide range of simulators. At the same time we would not overlook the sub­ stantial role played by simulators in say the aero-industry; indeed the ergonomic and psychological studies associated with that industry hold many lessons.

John Maynard Keynes is credited with the aphorism that the long-term view in economics must be taken in the light that "in the long-term we are aU dead". It is not in any spirit of gloom however that we invite our readers of the sixteenth volume in the review series, Advances in Nuclear Science and Technology, to take a long view. The two principal roles of nuclear energy lie in the military sphere - not addressed as such in this serie- in the sphere of the centralised production of power, and chiefly electricity generation. The immediate need for this latter has receded in the current era of restricted economies, vanishing growth rates and occasional surpluses of oil on the spot markets of the world. Nuclear energy has its most important role as an insurance against the hard times to come. But will the demand come at a time when the current reactors with their heavy use of natural uranium feed stocks are to be used or in an era where other aspects of the fuel supply must be exploited? The time scale is sufficiently uncertain and the duration of the demand so unascertainable that a sensible forward policy must anticipate that by the time the major demand comes, the reasonably available natural uranium may have been largely consumed in the poor convertors of the current thermal fission programme.

This volume represents the second of our occasional departures from the format of an annual review series, being devoted to one coherent topic. We have the pleasure therefore in presenting a concerted sequence of articles on the use of Simulators for Nuclear Power. An essential attribute of a quantified engineer in any discipline is to be able to model and predict, i.e. to analyze, the behaviour of the subject under scrutiny. Simulation goes, one would argue, a step further. The engineer providing a simulator takes a broader view of the system studied and makes the analysis available to a wider audience. Hence simulation may have a part to play in design but also in operation, in accident studies and also in training. It leads to synthesis as well as analysis. There is no doubt that the massive scale and the economic investment implied in nuclear power programmes demands an increased infra-structure in licensing and training as well as in design and operation. The simulator is a cheap alter­ native - admittedly cheap only in relative terms - but also perhaps an essential method of providing realistic experience with negligible or at least small risk. Nuclear power therefore has led to a wide range of simulators. At the same time we would not overlook the sub­ stantial role played by simulators in say the aero-industry; indeed the ergonomic and psychological studies associated with that industry hold many lessons.

John Maynard Keynes is credited with the aphorism that the long-term view in economics must be taken in the light that "in the long-term we are aU dead". It is not in any spirit of gloom however that we invite our readers of the sixteenth volume in the review series, Advances in Nuclear Science and Technology, to take a long view. The two principal roles of nuclear energy lie in the military sphere - not addressed as such in this serie- in the sphere of the centralised production of power, and chiefly electricity generation. The immediate need for this latter has receded in the current era of restricted economies, vanishing growth rates and occasional surpluses of oil on the spot markets of the world. Nuclear energy has its most important role as an insurance against the hard times to come. But will the demand come at a time when the current reactors with their heavy use of natural uranium feed stocks are to be used or in an era where other aspects of the fuel supply must be exploited? The time scale is sufficiently uncertain and the duration of the demand so unascertainable that a sensible forward policy must anticipate that by the time the major demand comes, the reasonably available natural uranium may have been largely consumed in the poor convertors of the current thermal fission programme.

We have pleasure in presenting Volume Fourteen to our readers. Volume Fourteen signifies a new dimension for our series, a volume devoted to the development of a single timely topic, that of sensitivity to uncertainty. This is still a broad topic and has been treated as such by the se­ veral distinguished authors contributing to the volume from their extensive experience both in theory and practice. While the theme running through the volume emphasizes uncertainties in areas related to reactor physics, it is true to say that this field of application has much to offer other disciplines as well. Some of the authors are engaged in ex­ tensions to other areas. The volume may therefore appeal to a much wider audience who will appreciate a single and compre­ hensive overview of a methodology that is applicable to other fields. Notable developments in the field of nuclear engineering have included the formatting in recent versions of Evaluated Nuclear Data Files (e.g., ENDF/B and its variants) of cross­ section uncertainty, the general acceptance of good practice in the representation of error correlation matrices, and more recent developments in the application of Monte Carlo tech­ niques to sensitivity analysis in complex geometries.

Dur previous volume 14 was devoted to an exposition of the topics of sensitivity analysis and uncertainty theory with its development and application in nuclear reactor physics at the heart of the discussion. In this volume, we return to our customary format as a selection of topics of current interest, authored by those working in the field. These topics range from the theoretical underpinnings of the (linear) Boltzmann transport equation to a resume of our ex­ pectations in what still may be thought of as twenty-first century technology, the world''s fusion reactor program. In the first article of this volume, we have Protopop­ escu''s analysis of the structure of the Boltzmann equation and its solutions for energy and space-dependent problems of an eigenvalue nature. There long has been a curious "folk history" effect in this area~ Wigner and Weinberg could de­ scribe it as "what was generally known was generally untrue". This account of the Boltzmann equation surely will show that a rigorous basis for our expectations of certain solutions can be well-founded on analysis. Ely Gelbard''s review of the methods of determining diffusion-type parameters in complex geometries where simple diffusion theory would be welcome has required just as much rigor to determine how such modeling can be made accurate, although to a more immediate and practical purpose. The two articles can be seen as interesting contrasts, facets of the same underlying problem showing apparently different aspects of the same central core.

Dur previous volume 14 was devoted to an exposition of the topics of sensitivity analysis and uncertainty theory with its development and application in nuclear reactor physics at the heart of the discussion. In this volume, we return to our customary format as a selection of topics of current interest, authored by those working in the field. These topics range from the theoretical underpinnings of the (linear) Boltzmann transport equation to a resume of our ex­ pectations in what still may be thought of as twenty-first century technology, the world's fusion reactor program. In the first article of this volume, we have Protopop­ escu's analysis of the structure of the Boltzmann equation and its solutions for energy and space-dependent problems of an eigenvalue nature. There long has been a curious "folk history" effect in this area~ Wigner and Weinberg could de­ scribe it as "what was generally known was generally untrue". This account of the Boltzmann equation surely will show that a rigorous basis for our expectations of certain solutions can be well-founded on analysis. Ely Gelbard's review of the methods of determining diffusion-type parameters in complex geometries where simple diffusion theory would be welcome has required just as much rigor to determine how such modeling can be made accurate, although to a more immediate and practical purpose. The two articles can be seen as interesting contrasts, facets of the same underlying problem showing apparently different aspects of the same central core.

The Editors have pleasure in presenting a further volume in the se­ ries to our international audience. Perhaps the most significant event of the passing year has been the publication by the IAEA of its study of the prob­ lem of continuing radiation protection in the lands surrounding Chernobyl. The major international project undertaken in 1990 and reported in 1991 is worth reading, not only for its assessment of how radiation protection intervention should be applied de facto in accident conditions, but equally for its account of the modern view of the philosophy of radiation protection. Some would, however, wish to argue that the acknowledgement by Iraq of its three-pronged development of nuclear weapons in conditions of secrecy and antagonism was equally significant and indeed as much a deter­ minant of the future of peaceful nuclear power as the Chernobyl accident. But it must be clear that the developments of weapons and electricity pro­ duction are not inescapably bound together; the Iraqi weapons program was not linked to any peaceful power development.

The Editors take pleasure in presenting a further vol­ ume in their Annual Review Series. The present volume con­ tains six papers that may be said to span from the theory of design to the practice of operation of modern nuclear power stations, therefore concentrating on nuclear energy as a source of electrical power. Starting with the most mathem­ atical, and proceeding in the direction of technology, we have the Chudley and Brough account of a new interpretation of (linear) Boltzmann transport theory in terms of the characteristic or ray approach. This seems to be new in application here, but of course the method is the child of many classical studies in the solution of partial differen­ tial equations and proves to remarkably well-suited to modern computers and their numerical bases. We might put the article by Dickson and Doncals on the design of heterogeneous cores next, with its significance for fast reactors of the future. The various "central worth" discrepancies, with their implication for safety and relia­ bility founded on, inter alia, the Doppler effect, have made this a major area for resolution: to see that we can develop design methods and codes that will reconcile theory and exper,. . . iment to the point at which theoretical designs could be accepted for building without the need for a full-scale mock­ up, as had to be done in the 1950''s for the light water re­ actors.

The Editors take pleasure in presenting a further vol­ ume in their Annual Review Series. The present volume con­ tains six papers that may be said to span from the theory of design to the practice of operation of modern nuclear power stations, therefore concentrating on nuclear energy as a source of electrical power. Starting with the most mathem­ atical, and proceeding in the direction of technology, we have the Chudley and Brough account of a new interpretation of (linear) Boltzmann transport theory in terms of the characteristic or ray approach. This seems to be new in application here, but of course the method is the child of many classical studies in the solution of partial differen­ tial equations and proves to remarkably well-suited to modern computers and their numerical bases. We might put the article by Dickson and Doncals on the design of heterogeneous cores next, with its significance for fast reactors of the future. The various "central worth" discrepancies, with their implication for safety and relia­ bility founded on, inter alia, the Doppler effect, have made this a major area for resolution: to see that we can develop design methods and codes that will reconcile theory and exper,. . . iment to the point at which theoretical designs could be accepted for building without the need for a full-scale mock­ up, as had to be done in the 1950's for the light water re­ actors.

The Editors take pleasure in presenting Volume 13 of this annual review series, consisting, as usual, of author­ itative reviews of timely developments in the technical fields of nuclear engineering, science, and teechnology. No one in the community we try to serve in a post­ Harrisburg era will need convincing of the relevance of the first two items to be mentioned from the volume. Instru­ mentation for two-phase flow measurements, by Banerjee and Lahey, has applicability in the engineering research labor­ atory and to power reactors; the U. S. LWR still remains the dominant power reactor type and seems likely to retain its hold if only through the capital of existing plants this century. Messrs. Bohm, Closs, and Kuhn, however, have a longer time scale to respect as they view for us the prospects of nuclear waste disposal from a European viewpoint. They bring out nicely the political aspects that cannot be divorced from technical considerations in this area, or in the more militant terms of confrontation, in this arena, perhaps. We are pleased to carry in this volume two complemen­ tary papers on mathematical methods in nuclear engineering.

The Editors take pleasure in presenting Volume 13 of this annual review series, consisting, as usual, of author­ itative reviews of timely developments in the technical fields of nuclear engineering, science, and teechnology. No one in the community we try to serve in a post­ Harrisburg era will need convincing of the relevance of the first two items to be mentioned from the volume. Instru­ mentation for two-phase flow measurements, by Banerjee and Lahey, has applicability in the engineering research labor­ atory and to power reactors; the U. S. LWR still remains the dominant power reactor type and seems likely to retain its hold if only through the capital of existing plants this century. Messrs. Bohm, Closs, and Kuhn, however, have a longer time scale to respect as they view for us the prospects of nuclear waste disposal from a European viewpoint. They bring out nicely the political aspects that cannot be divorced from technical considerations in this area, or in the more militant terms of confrontation, in this arena, perhaps. We are pleased to carry in this volume two complemen­ tary papers on mathematical methods in nuclear engineering.

The editors are happy to present the twentieth volume in the review series Advances in Nuclear Science and Technology. Lahey and Drew, our first authors, present a concise development of the equations for two-phase flow, essential to the understanding of normal and, even more, accidental behavior in water-cooled reactors. The commitment to the PWR in Europe (now joined by England in this respect) and the aftermath of Chernobyl in the U.S.S.R. put continuing emphasis on the need for good understanding of two-phase phenomena to provide good modelling. The second review, by Downar and Sesonske, of light water reactor fuel modelling, follows this LWR interest and emphasises a current major economic interest: how to get the most out of fuel. Recollecting that the capital cost of nuclear power is high, it is easy to overlook the fact that in the lifetime of a plant as much money is spent on fuel as capital. Optimization is worthwhile. The U.S. scene still does not practice recycling whereas the European scene does. Now that the United Kingdom is building its first (commercial) light water reactor, the linear modelling of burnup exploited by the second authors will prove even more useful, although previously exploited for advanced gas-cooled reactors. If the U.K. is behind in this respect, the recycling undertaken by France and England has led to trial use of plutonium in thermal reactors but, even more, the availability of plutonium for fast reactors.

The Editors have pleasure in presenting a further volume in the se­ ries to our international audience. Perhaps the most significant event of the passing year has been the publication by the IAEA of its study of the prob­ lem of continuing radiation protection in the lands surrounding Chernobyl. The major international project undertaken in 1990 and reported in 1991 is worth reading, not only for its assessment of how radiation protection intervention should be applied de facto in accident conditions, but equally for its account of the modern view of the philosophy of radiation protection. Some would, however, wish to argue that the acknowledgement by Iraq of its three-pronged development of nuclear weapons in conditions of secrecy and antagonism was equally significant and indeed as much a deter­ minant of the future of peaceful nuclear power as the Chernobyl accident. But it must be clear that the developments of weapons and electricity pro­ duction are not inescapably bound together; the Iraqi weapons program was not linked to any peaceful power development.

The editors have pleasure in presenting this volume of our review series. We have specialised in three areas: perturbation Monte Carlo, non-linear kinetics and the transfer of radioactive fluids in rocks. These contributions are linked, however, in the demands for optimising complex systems that are a feature of the scale of nuclear power production. Kuniharu Kishida’s account of Japanese thinking in the application of modern non-linear theory to reactor kinetics and control comes at a time when the community of control scholars is seeking how to apply the new ideas that have led to the prominence of chaos theory to our field. Pr- lems of maintenance in power reactors are as severe as ever and must be solved for credibility to characterise any new program. As much as 30% of unanticipated down-time, for example, is due to the failure of motor op- ated valves. We need a theory to provide for preventive maintenance. This in turn depends heavily on on-line monitoring to anticipate failure as well as expert systems to schedule preventive treatment. Noise theory with its promise of on-line interpretation of information from inchoate breakdown is the key. It is all too likely that the need to deal with major departures makes a non-linear theory of noise essential. We can be grateful that P- fessor Kishida has provided us with such a consistent account.

Some countries have moved beyond the design and operation of nuclear electricity generating systems to confronting the issue of nuclear waste disposal, whole others are still committed to further nuclear facility construction. Volume 24 chronicles these key developments and examines nuclear reactor accidents at Chernobyl, Bhopal, and TMI. The text also analyzes current international knowledge of neutron interactions; deterministic methods based on mean values for assessing radiation distributions; practical applications of the TIBERE models to explicit computation of leakage terms in realistic reactor geometry; and a technique to deal with the issues of finance, risk assessment, and public perception.

The present review volume not only covers a wide range of topics pertinent to nuclear science and technology, but has attracted a distinguished international authorship, for which the editors are grateful. The opening review by Drs. Janet Tawn and Richard Wakeford addresses the difficult matter of questioning sci- tific hypotheses in a court of law. The United Kingdom experienced a substantial nuclear accident in the 1950s in the form of the Windscale Pile fire. This in itself had both good and bad consequences; the setting up of a licensing authority to ensure nuclear safety was one, the understandable public sentiment concerning nuclear power (despite the fire occurring in a weapons pile) the other. Windscale today is subsumed in the reprocessing plant at Sellafield operated by British Nuclear Fuels plc and it was inevitable perhaps that when an excess cluster of childhood leukaemia was observed in the nearby village of Seascale that public concern should be promoted by the media, leading to the hearing of a claim of compensation brought on behalf of two of the families of BNFLs workers who had suffered that loss. The review article demonstrates the complexity of und- standing such a claim against the statistical fluctuations inherent and shows how the courts were persuaded of the need to propose a biological mechanism if responsibility were to be held. The Company were undoubtedly relieved by the finding.

Since its initiation in 1962, this series has presented authoritative reviews of the most important developments in nuclear science and engineering, from both theoretical and applied perspectives. In addition, many original contributions are included.