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Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
Xiaoling Yang et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 2 | August 2011 | Pages 615-619
Alternate Concepts & Magnets | Proceedings of the Nineteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE) (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12451
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A volumetrically-loaded ultra-high-density deuterium cluster material is described here for use as a deuteron beam source in laser matter interactions. Due to high volumetric loading, the material has potential to provide enough deuteron beam flux for the inertial confinement fusion (ICF) fuel ignition, avoiding depletion problem encountered by current proton-driven fast ignition (FI). In addition, accelerated deuterons can fuse with the ICF fuel (both D and T) to provide extra “bonus” energy gain, which further relaxes the laser-driver energy needed. Preliminary TRIDENT sub-Petawatt Laser experiments have provided some encouraging results showing that our cluster foils with a relative low packing fraction, can achieve a high yield of the accelerated deuterons even in the presence of an unwanted surface contaminant.