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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...