The perception of radioactive waste as a major problem for the industrial world has developed only recently. Four decades ago the disposal of such waste was regarded as a relatively minor matter. Those were the heady days when nuclear fission seemed the answer to the world's energy needs: the two wartime bombs had demonstrated its awesome power, and now it was to be harnessed for the production of electricity, the excavation of canals, even the running of cars and airplanes. In all applications of fission some waste containing radioactive elements would be generated of course, but it seemed only a trivial annoyance, a problem whose solution could be deferred until the more exciting challenges of constructing reactors and devising more efficient weapons had been mastered. So waste accumulated, some in tanks and some buried in shallow trenches. These were recognized as only temporary, makeshift measures, because it was known that the debris would be hazardous to its surroundings for many thousands of years and hence that more permanent disposal would someday be needed. The difficulty of accomplishing this more lasting disposal only gradually became apparent. The difficulty has been compounded by uncertainty about the physiological effects oflow-Ievel radiation, by the inadequacy of detailed knowledge about the behavior of engineered and geologic materials over long periods under unusual conditions, and by the sensitization of popular fears about radiation in all its forms following widely publicized reactor accidents and leaks from waste storage sites.

1. INTRODUCTION 2 2. CRAYONS COMBUSTIBLES 4 3. CLASSIFICATION DES DETAILS VUS PAR NEUTRONOGRAPHIE 8 4. REPERAGE DES NEUTRONOGRAMMES 12 5. UTILISATION DU RECUEIL 14 6. CONTENU DU RECUEIL 16 7. TERMINOLOGIE 30 8. INSTALLATIONS DE NEUTRONOGRAPHIE A L'INTERIEUR DE LA COMMUNAUTE EUROPEENNE 42 9. REFERENCES 54 10. COLLECTION DES NEUTRONOGRAMMES SUR PAPIER PHOTOGRAPHIQUE (ECHELLE 2:1) ET FILM (ECHELLE 1:1) 55 TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE 1. INTRODUCTION 3 2. FUEL PINS 5 3. CLASSIFICATION OF NEUTRON RADIOGRAPHIC FINDINGS 9 4. MARKING OF THE RADIOGRAPHS 13 5. HOW TO USE THE COLLECTION 15 6. CONTENTS OF THE COLLECTION 17 7. TERMINOLOGY 31 8. NEUTRON RADIOGRAPHY INSTALLATIONS IN THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY 43 9. REFERENCES 54 10. REFERENCE NEUTRON RADIOGRAPHS ON PHOTOGRAPHIC PAPER (SCALE 2:1) AND FILM (SCALE 1:1) 55 PREFACE Although the principles of radiography with neutron beams have been known for some 45 years, their practical application in industry and research is still a rather young field. Norms, standards, and common terms of reference are scarce. One of the main tasks of the Neutron Radiography Working Group (NRWG) -constituted by the Joint Research Centre Petten of the Commission of the European Communities and national nuclear research centres within the European Community -has been to fill this gap.

This NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Disposal of Weapons Plutonium is a follow-up event to two preceding workshops, each dealing with a special subject within the overall disarmament issue: "Disposition of Weapon Plutonium," sponsored by the NATO Science Committee. The first workshop of this series was held at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London on 24-25 January 1994, entitled "Managing the Plutonium Surplus, Applications, and Options." Its over all goal was to clarify the current situation with respect to pluto nium characteristics and availability, the technical options for use or disposal, and their main technical, environmental, and economic constraints. In the immediate term, plutonium recovered from dismantled nuclear warheads will have to be stored securely, and under international safeguards if possible. In the intermediate term, the principal alter natives for disposition of this plutonium are: irradiation in mixed oxide (MOX) fuel assemblies in existing commercial light-water reac tors or in specially adapted light-water reactors capable of operation with full cores of MOX fuel .and irradiation in future fast reactors. Another option is to blend plutonium with high-level waste as it is vitrified for final disposal in a geologic repository. In both cases, the high radioactivity of the resulting products provides "self shielding" and prevents separation of plutonium without already developed and available sophisticated technology. The so-called "spent fuel standard" as an effective protection barrier is - quired in either case."

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."

The European Community's Indirect Action Research Programme on the Safety of Thermal Water Reactors had as main obj ectives to execute useful fundamental research, complementary and confirmatory to on-going work in national programmes, and to improve collaboration and exchange of inform ation between laboratories in the Member States. The Seminar was aimed to report on work performed during the last five years and to identify useful further research areas with a tentative assessment of the state of the art for future work in certain issues of LWR-safety. The results obtained in 33 research projects executed in different national laboratories of the European Community were presented, evaluated and discussed, together with a number of invited papers on topics related to the research programme. Topics covered mainly within 3 distinct research areas or sub-programmes: Research Area A: The loss of coolant accident (LOCA) and the func tioning and performance of the emergency core cooling system (ECCS). Fundamental work on thermalhydraulics and heat transfer during refill and reflood of an uncovered core after a LOCA. Research Area B: The protection of nuclear power plants against external gas cloud explosions. Study of the impact on plant structure and systems of external explosions of dense combustible gas clouds due to accidental releases of hydro carbons in the vicinity of the plant. Research Area C: The release and distribution of radioactive fission products in the atmosphere following a reactor accident.

The study of nuclear dynamics is now in one of its most interesting phases. The theory is in the process of establishing an increasingly reliable transport description of heavy ion reactions from the initial violent phase dominated by first collisions to the more thermalized later stages of the reaction. This is true for the low-to-medium energy reactions, where the dynamics is formulated in terms of nucleonic, or in general hadronic, degrees of freedom. And it is also becoming a reality in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion reactions, where partonic elementary degrees of freedom have to be used. Experiments are now able to 'utilize the existing accelerators and multiparticle detec tion systems to conduct unprecedented studies of heavy-ion collisions on an event-by-event basis. In addition, the field anticipates the completion of the construction of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the proposed upgrade of the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, promising qualitatively new data for the near future. All of these efforts are basically directed to the exploration of the change the nuclear medium provides for the properties and interactions of individual nucleons and, ultimately, the exploration of the nuclear matter phase diagram. The investigation of this phase dia gram, including all of the interesting phase transitions predicted from theoretical grounds, is the focus of most of the theoretical and experimental investigations of nuclear dynamics conducted today."

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."

This book of proceedings collects the papers presented at the Workshop on Diagnostics for ITER, held at Villa Monastero, Varenna (Italy), from August 28 to September 1, 1995. The Workshop was organised by the International School of Plasma Physics "Piero Caldirola. " Established in 1971, the ISPP has organised over fifty advanced courses and workshops on topics mainly related to plasma physics. In particular, courses and workshops on plasma diagnostics (previously held in 1975, 1978, 1982, 1986, and 1991) can be considered milestones in the history of this institution. Looking back at the proceedings of the previous meetings in Varenna, one can appreciate the rapid progress in the field of plasma diagnostics over the past 20 years. The 1995 workshop was co-organised by the Istituto di Fisica del Plasma of the National Research Council (CNR). In contrast to previous Varenna meetings on diagnostics, which have covered diagnostics in present-day tokamaks and which have had a substantial tutorial component, the 1995 workshop concentrated specifically on the problems and challenges of ITER diagnostics. ITER (the International Thennonuclear Experimental Reactor, a joint venture of Europe, Japan, Russia, and the United States, presently under design) will need to measure a wide range of plasma parameters in order to reach and sustain high levels of fusion power. A list of the measurement requirements together with the parameter ranges, target measurement resolutions, and accuracies provides the starting point for selecting a list of candidate diagnostic systems.

449 one finds that for y = Fo (e) C= :n; V3 [Po (2'Yj) 3 -kjF(i) + (2'Yj)! Fd (2'Yj) 3 -ijF (*m, } 1 ( 14.17) C2 = :n; [ - (2'Yj)! Fd (2'Yj) 3 -ijF(i) + Fo (2'Yj) 3 -~;r(i)J, and if y is to be Go(e), C and Chave the same form with Go (2'Yj) replacing Po (2'Yj) 1 2 and G~(2'Yj) replacing Fd(2'Yj). The values of the functions at eo =2'Yj may be ob- tained from (14.8). 1 J. K. TYSON has employed the modified Hankel functions of order one- third 2 as solutions of (13.4) to obtain expressions for the Coulomb functions for L =0 which converge near e =2'Yj. His results appear as linear combinations of the real and imaginary parts of n ~(x) = (12)!e-;/6 [A;{- x) - iB;(-x)J, (14.18) and its derivatives multiplying power series in x = (e - 2'Yj)j(2'Yj)1. For values 1 away from the turning point for L =0, TYSON has obtained forms for Po{e) and Go(e) which are similar to (13.1) to (13.3). The JWKB approximation is again the leading term, and some higher order corrections are given. Expressions similar to Eqs. (14.11) and (14.12) have been obtained by T.D. 3 NEWTON employing the integral representation of (4.4). His results give re- presentations of FL(e), Gde) in the vicinity of e=2'Yj [whereas (14.11), (14.12) converge near e=eLJ when L

The Erice International School of Fusion Reactor Techno logy held its 1981 course on - Unconventional Approaches to Fusion - in combination with the IAEA Technical Committee meeting on - Critical Analysis of Alternative Fusion Concepts -. The two events took place in the second half of March with an overlap of a few days only. The present proceedings include the first week's papers; those presented during the second week will be summarised in Nuclear Fusion. Right from the beginning of the course, and in particular In R. Carruthers' opening talk, it was clear that an uncon ventional approach was considered stimulating insofar as its con ception presented advantageous aspects with respect to the To kamak. Indeed the Tokamak was recognized as an - imper fect frame of reference- (K. H. Schmitter) in the sense that, al though it deserves to be considered as a frame of reference for the other devices because it is the most advanced in the scientific demonstration of controlled thermonuclear fusion, as a fusion reactor, however, the Tokamak does not seem to be completely satisfactory either from an economic or from an operational point of view, if compared with that - enticing ogre -, the proven fission reactor (less enticing to the public). Comparison of a Tokamak reactor with a PWR can be founded on considerations of such a basic nature that it becomes almost automatic to ask how far the various unconventional ap proaches to fusion are exempt from the Tokamak's drawbacks."

A beam of ions in the fonn of "canal rays" was first observed in 1886 by E. Goldstein. The first ion source was invented by J. J. Thomson in 1910. This ion source became the basis for the first widespread application of ion sources in mass spectrographs and mass spectrometers. The second important application of ion sources is ion accelerators, which since the beginning of the 1930s have been employed in research on nuclear reactions and are now used in industry and medicine. A third application of ion sources is in systems for isotope separation and re search on the interaction of atomic particles with solids (1940s). The result of this research and development is the use of ion sources in semiconductor doping, decontamination of surfaces, and micromachining of surfaces (1960s and' 1970s), which is a fourth area of applications for ion sources. The heating of plasmas in magnetic confinement devices to thennonuclear temperatures (100-1000 MK) with the aid of megawatt beams of hydrogen and deuterium ions and atoms has become a fifth promising area of application for ion sources which can produce ion beams with steady-state currents of up to 100 A. Finally, experimental and industrial research are under way on the alloying of metals and the fabrication of coatings which greatly improve the physical and chemical properties of metals. These coatings can increase the hardness, high temperature corrosion resistance, and wear resistance of metals, and can enhance or reduce friction, etc."

A survey of recent developments in the field of plutonium disposal by the application of advanced nuclear systems, both critical and subcritical. Current national R&D plans are summarized. The actinide-fuelled critical reactors are associated with control problems, since they tend to have a small delayed neutron fraction coupled with a small Doppler effect and a positive void coefficient. Current thinking is turning to accelerator-driven subcritical systems for the transmutation of actinides. The book's conclusion is that the various systems proposed are technically feasible, even though not yet technically mature. The book presents a unique summary and evaluation of all relevant possibilities for burning surplus plutonium, presented by experts from a variety of different disciplines and interests, including the defence establishment. The obvious issue - the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons - is vital, but the matter represents a complex technological challenge that also requires an assessment in economic terms.

This second volume of the Charged Particle Traps deals with the rapidly expanding body of research exploiting the electromagnetic con?nement of ions, whose principles and techniques were the subject of volume I. These applications include revolutionary advances in diverse ?elds, ranging from such practical ?elds as mass spectrometry, to the establishment of an ult- stable standard of frequency and the emergent ?eld of quantum computing made possible by the observation of the quantum behavior of laser-cooled con?nedions. Bothexperimentalandtheoreticalactivity intheseapplications has proliferated widely, and the number of diverse articles in the literature on its many facets has reached the point where it is useful to distill and organize the published work in a uni?ed volume that de?nes the current status of the ?eld. As explained in volume I, the technique of con?ning charged particles in suitable electromagnetic ?elds was initially conceived by W. Paul as a thr- dimensional version of his rf quadrupole mass ?lter. Its ?rst application to rf spectroscopy on atomic ions was completed in H. G. Dehmelt's laboratory where notable work was later done on the free electron using the Penning trap. The further exploitation of these devices has followed more or less - dependently along the two initial broad areas: mass spectrometry and high resolution spectroscopy. In volume I a detailed account is given of the theory of operation and experimental techniques of the various forms of Paul and Penning ion traps.

This book is intended to provide an introduction to the basic principles of nuclear fission reactors for advanced undergraduate or graduate students of physics and engineering. The presentation is also suitable for physicists or engineers who are entering the nuclear power field without previous experience with nuclear reactors. No background knowledge is required beyond that typically acquired in the first two years of an undergraduate program in physics or engineering. Throughout, the emphasis is on explaining why particular reactor systems have evolved in the way they have, without going into great detail about reactor physics or methods of design analysis, which are already covered in a number of excellent specialist texts. The first two chapters serve as an introduction to the basic physics of the atom and the nucleus and to nuclear fission and the nuclear chain reaction. Chapter 3 deals with the fundamentals of nuclear reactor theory, covering neutron slowing down and the spatial dependence of the neutron flux in the reactor, based on the solution of the diffusion equations. The chapter includes a major section on reactor kinetics and control, including'tempera ture and void coefficients and xenon poisoning effects in power reactors. Chapter 4 describes various aspects offuel management and fuel cycles, while Chapter 5 considers materials problems for fuel and other constituents of the reactor. The processes of heat generation and removal are covered in Chapter 6.

25 Die Ventile leiten nur wahrend einer sehr kurzen Zeit, namlich dann, wenn das Potential der Anode positiv gegentiber der Kathode ist. Fig. 24 zeigt eine dreistufige Anordnung. Unter der Annahme idealer Ventile und unter Vernach- lassigung der Streukapazitaten stellen sich an den Knotenpunkten 3, 2, 1 und 3*,2*,1* die in Fig. 25 wiedergegebenen Spannungen ein. Der hier dargestellte, idealisierte Generator liefert eine Leerlaufspannung von 6 U , wobei mit U o o die Amplitude der Transformatorspannung Uocoswt bezeichnet ist. fJ) Der Kaskadengenerator bei Belastung. Wird der Kaskadengenerator durch einen Widerstand oder durch ein Beschleunigungsrohr belastet, so sinkt natur- 8!.1o ~-------~-----0 u/;!.Io r-------"-L---7"c----~L--0 J!.Io Ig / ] !.Iocoswt Fig. 25. Leerlau!spannungen beim Generator in Fig. 24. Fig. 26. Der belastete Kaskadengenerator. gemaB die Ausgangsspannung, und zwar umso starker, je groBer der Belastungs- strom Ig ist. Unter Ig wollen wir den vom Generator gelieferten, arithmetischen Mittelwert des Stromes, also den abgegebenen Gleichstrom verstehen. Wahrend einer Periode lit der Wechselspannung wird der Glattungssaule somit die Ladung Q= Ig (11.1) f entzogen. Falls ein stationarer Zustand bestehen solI, muB diese Ladung periodisch wieder zugeftihrt werden. Dies geschieht dadurch, daB wahrend einer Halbwelle der Wechselspannung die Ladung Q von den Punkten 3* nach 3, bzw. 2* nach 2 und 1 * nach 1 flieBt, wahrend in der andern Halbwelle die Ladung Q von Erde nach 3 * bzw. von 3 nach 2* und von 2 nach 1 * transportiert wird.

This book explains how society will face an energy crisis in the coming decades owing to increasing scarcity of fossil fuels and climate change impacts. It carefully explores this coming crisis and concisely examines all of the major technologies related to energy production (fossil fuels, renewables, and nuclear) and their impacts on our society and environment. The author argues that it is wrong to pit alternatives to fossil fuels against each other and proposes that nuclear energy, although by no means free of problems, can be a viable source of reliable and carbon-free electricity. He concludes by calling for a diversified and rational mix of electricity generation in order to mitigate the effects of the energy crisis. Throughout, the book is spiced with science, history, and anecdotes in a way that ensures rewarding reading without loss of rigor.

This book contains the lectures and the concluding discussion of the "Seminar on Safety, Environmental Impact, and Economic Prospects of Nuclear Fusion," which was held at Erice, August 6-12, 1989. In selecting the contributions to this 9th meeting held by the International School of Fusion Reactor Technology at the E. Majorana Center for Scientific Cul ture in Erice, we tried to provide a comprehensive coverage of the many interre lated and interdisciplinary aspects of what ultimately turns out to be the global acceptance criteria of our society with respect to controlled nuclear fusion. Consequently, this edited collection of the papers presented should provide an overview of these issues. We thus hope that this book, with its extensive subject index, will also be of interest and help to nonfusion specialists and, in general, to those who from curiosity or by assignment are required to be informed on these as pects of fusion energy."

MOX fuel, a mixture of weapon-grade plutonium and natural or depleted uranium, may be used to deplete a portion of the world's surplus of weapon-grade plutonium. A number of reactors currently operate in Europe with one-third MOX cores, and others are scheduled to begin using MOX fuels in both Europe and Japan in the near future. While Russia has laboratory-scale MOX fabrication facilities, the technology remains under study. No fuels containing plutonium are used in the U.S. The 25 presentations in this book give an impressive overview of MOX technology. The following issues are covered: an up to date report on the disposition of ex-weapons Pu in Russia; an analysis of safety features of MOX fuel configurations of different reactor concepts and their operating and control measures; an exchange of information on the status of MOX utilisation in existing power plants, the fabrication technology of various MOX fuels and their behaviour in practice; a discussion of the typical national approaches by Russia and the western countries to the utilisation of Pu as MOX fuel; an introduction to new ideas, enhancing the disposition option of MOX fuel exploitation and destruction in existing and future advanced reactor systems; and the identification of common research areas where defined tasks can be initiated in cooperative partnership.

"International Energy Forum 1999" was held in Washington D.C. during November 5-6, 1999 in the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Crystal City. Once again the main topic was Nuclear Energy. Various papers presented contained pros and cons of Nuclear Energy for generating electricity. We were aiming to clarify the often discussed subject matter of the virtues of Nuclear Energy with regard to Global Warming as compared to using fossil fuels for the generation of electricity. The latter is also currently the only way to operate our means of transportation like automobiles, planes etc. Therefore emission into the atmosphere of greenhouse gases constitutes the main source of Global Warming, which is absent in the case of Nuclear Energy. These arguments are often put forward to promote the use of Nuclear Energy. However not all is well with the Nuclear Energy. There are the questions of the waste problem so far unsolved, safety of Nuclear Reactors is not guaranteed to the extent that they are inherently safe. If we aim to construct inherently safe reactors, then the economics of a Nuclear Reactor makes it unacceptable.

Plasma-Material Interaction in Controlled Fusion deals with the specific contact between the fourth state of matter, i.e. plasma, and the first state of matter, i.e. a solid wall, in controlled fusion experiments. A comprehensive analysis of the main processes of plasma-surface interaction is given together with an assessment of the most critical questions within the context of general criteria and operation limits. It is shown that the choice of plasma-facing materials can be reduced to a very limited list of possible candidates. Plasma-Material Interaction in Controlled Fusion emphasizes that a reliable solution of the material problem can only be found by adjusting the materials to suitable plasma scenarios and vice versa.

The Advanced Research Workshop on "Nuclear Submarine Decommissioning and Related Problems" was held at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Russia on June 19-22, 1995. On June 17 and 18, 1995 some of the workshop participants visited the Zwezdochka Shipyard at Severodvinsk which is a repair and dismantlement facility for Russian nuclear submarines. Attendance at the workshop was approximately 115 with participants from Russia, United States, France, Norway, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, and Germany. The workshop was sponsored by the Disarmament Panel of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Science Committee. The sponsorship and the financial support of NATO is gratefully acknowledged. The workshop was organized in Russia by the Nuclear Safety Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IBRAE). The efforts of many individuals from IBRAE in producing both a technically challenging workshop and an almost flawless one are also gratefully acknowledged. In addition, the support of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the State Committee of the Russian Federation on Defense Technologies, the Ministry of the Russian Federation on Atomic Energy, the Navy of the Russian Federation, and the United States Department of Energy is acknowledged. xi CURRENT STATUS OF NUCLEAR SUBMARINE DECOMMISSIONING PROBLEMS OF NUCLEAR SUBMARINE DECOMMISSIONING AND RECYCLING N. I. SHUMKOV State Committee for Defense Industry (Goseomoboronprom) Moscow, Russia 1. General Description of the Problem Undoubtedly, the problem of nuclear submarine decommissioning and recycling has been worrying Russian civil and military specialists involved in development, building and operation of submarines for many years.

Fuzzy systems and soft computing are new computing techniques that are tolerant to imprecision, uncertainty and partial truths. Applications of these techniques in nuclear engineering present a tremendous challenge due to its strict nuclear safety regulation. The fields of nuclear engineering, fuzzy systems and soft computing have nevertheless matured considerably during the last decade. This book presents new application potentials for Fuzzy Systems and Soft Computing in Nuclear Engineering. The root of this book can be traced back to the series of the first, second and third international workshops on Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Technologies in Nuclear Science (FUNS), which were successfully held in Mol, September 14-16, 1994 (FLINS'94), in Mol, September 25-27, 1996 (FLINS'96), and in Antwerp, September 14-16, 1998 (FLINS'98). The conferences were organised by the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCKeCEN) and aimed at bringing together scientists, researchers, and engineers from academia and industry, at introducing the principles of fuzzy logic, neural networks, genetic algorithms and other soft computing methodologies, to the field of nuclear engineering, and at applying these techniques to complex problem solving within nuclear industry and related research fields. This book, as its title suggests, consists of nuclear engineering applications of fuzzy systems (Chapters 1-10) and soft computing (Chapters 11-21). Nine pertinent chapters are based on the extended version of papers at FLINS'98 and the other 12 chapters are original contributions with up-to-date coverage of fuzzy and soft computing applications by leading researchers written exclusively for this book."

The handling of actinides and actinide-based materials provides significant technological challenges due to the toxicity and radioactivity associated with these materials. These challenges are particularly apparent in the nuclear power industry. Under normal operation, a reactor can produce a significant amount of spent fuel requiring subsequent containment for geologic times, and under accident conditions it can release lethal doses of radioactive material to the environment. Inevitably, radioactive material will enter the environment, necessitating as complete an understanding as possible of its behavior. An understanding of the interaction between actinides and the environment must be based on a knowledge of their basic physical and chemical properties. To date, although there is general agreement on the principles for waste disposal, no facility has been built for the long term disposal of high level radioactive waste from either normal reactor operations or from accidental catastrophes. This makes it most important for the scientific and technical community to develop the necessary cross-disciplinary understanding that will help us implement safe and secure waste management, accident remediation and accident prevention systems.

This second edition is a thoroughly revised, updated and expanded version of a classic text, with lots of new material on electronic signal creation, amplification and shaping. It 's still a thorough general introduction, too, to the theory and operation of drift chambers. The topics discussed include the basics of gas ionization, electronic drift and signal creation and discuss in depth the fundamental limits of accuracy and the issue of particle identification.