Monthly Archives: August 2020

Sustaining the chain reaction without criticality

I have found a neat nuclear physics problem, and have written a draft of article about it. Below I explain how I came to be interested in this problem, give some context most physicists may not be familiar with, and explain the result briefly.

A while back, I took a small part in the organization of the French public debate on radioactive waste management. My work was not very technical, but got me interested in the rich physics involved. The debate itself didn’t allow me to do real research on the subject: it was certainly not what was asked from me, and there was already so much to learn about the practical details.

After the debate ended, I kept on reading about the subject on the side. In particular, I read more on advanced reactor designs, where I found a neat theoretical question which I believe was unanswered.

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