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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.
Richard F. Mattas
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 19 | Number 3 | May 1991 | Pages 1487-1492
ITER | Proceedings of the Ninth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Oak Brook, Illinois, October 7-11, 1990) | doi.org/10.13182/FST91-A29551
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The performance of the ITER first wall and divertor have been analyzed using the Fusion Lifetime Prediction (FLIP) code. The code is a one-dimensional finite difference code which calculates the changes in properties, stress, strain, and temperature overtime for plate structures. The results indicate that the first wall should be able to accommodate up to ∼0.6 MW/m2 heat flux for the reference operating conditions. At much higher levels, fatigue and cracking are predicted to lead to rapid failure. The loss of ductility in irradiated austenitic stainless steel at low temperatures is a concern which may limit operating life. The results of the divertor analysis show that a bare, 2 mm thick plate of Nb-1Zr or TZM can accommodate fluxes of 15–20 MW/m2 for the ITER conditions. Duplex structures composed of 2 mm of tungsten on 2mm of Nb-1Zr or TZM are limited to 8–10 MW/m2.