Nuclear Reactor Physics

Nuclear power plants supply a large share of the world's electricity, and reactors are now also used in factories, hospitals, defense programs and research laboratories. Reactor physics sits at the heart of nuclear engineering, yet this book is the first full textbook and reference on the subject in roughly twenty-five years, covering both foundational and advanced material.

The author, Weston Stacey, opens with the basic physical laws, the nuclear data, and the calculation methods needed to describe how a reactor behaves both at steady state and as conditions change. Later chapters move into more demanding topics, with a substantial section on neutron transport computation.

To help readers build computational skills, the book works through many examples, showing each step of the calculations, and includes problems at the end of every chapter. It is written for students encountering the field for the first time, for people who need a grounding in how reactors function, and for specialists in reactor physics and its computations. Working engineers, and researchers, technicians and government regulators who want a deeper understanding of reactors, can also use it for self-study.